[album artwork] our final design.

Here is the final digipak -

Here is the front cover -

Here is the back cover -


Here is the spine for the album -

Here is the inside cover -


Here is the CD cover -

Here is our final album design. In the end I went for a different’t approach and look then originally planned. I went for a lighter red, a more pinkish white colour, allow for a more female audience, that would generally appeal more to the gentle colours.

The front cover has Origami typed out a bunch and then Cigarettes after sex printed on top, creating a stylistic montage of text. While being a unique album design it strengthens the brand having the band name printed in large, putting the band into peoples minds on a subconscious level, making it more likely for them to come back and purchase a product due to familiarity. I followed the conventions of the Alt J album design and followed the creative path for the front cover instead of having a face.

The inside cover has the instruction to make an origami swan as planned, while I desaturated it to make it more neutral its multicolours I believed add to the overall album cover not becoming stagnant and therefore intriguing for audiences, and therefore wanting audiences to by more into their image.

The CD cover has the faces of the band members cut up making one face, because when it comes down to it all their unique realities make one unique sound. The faces have a pop art feel due to the cut out structure making it feel somewhat more organic. The faces reveal more about their identity and allow the audiences to buy more into their star image. For most of the similar products I found this section to be clean and simple and thats how wanted it, so I left it with just the image of the faces.

Finally the back cover. Through out the design process I found the back cover the most difficult. Most of the final designs were quite spontaneous in the small details, and this section I especially I found it difficult to make something I actually liked. I followed the conventions The Smiths back album cover, which was simple and clean, so I kept it like that and just added the swans because I took the swans off from the front of the design and I need it consisted.

Here is a video I made on the design process, with a special guest narration of myself -

[album artwork] creating the final album.

Here is a short video I made on the creation process of the final album design. It shows the variations of what I made to get to the final design and how I did it. Plus it has a beautiful narration by my self so yeah check it out below -

While creating the album design I kept in mind firstly our prototypes, music video and what message we wanted our overall campaign to give off.

Here is gif of me finding the right font for the orgiami background -

Overall I am pleased with how the creation process has gone, our development was super important to get it to this final point, but as well it was fun to experiment on the way. 

[album artwork] rough draft album design.

After the focus groups feedback and seeing the groups work, I began working away at my own designs. Here is a screen recording below of my progress.


And here is the front, which in the end i decided to not have any text as it didn't look very aesthetic, and what found in my research into similar products is that the Alt J album did the same, therefore it follows the genre conventions.

I have brail on the left and right which says cigarettes after sex which i think is a minimal and modern take to text on a album. Behind the bird I put the compilation of the faces which was for the back of the album but inverted. and then on the front I have the origami swan.

Here is the back cover - 

The back cover uses the compilation of the faces which I got from the video footage we had. Below this image we would have the text and the rights info etc. This is just a rough design of the back and front which is incomplete. Now I have created a theme I will try to delegate the task of inside elements of the digipack to the group.

the editing process

So for less then a month now I have been working hard on the editing for the music video. So here is a short film I made on the editing process.



While editing a music video there is a specific workflow to go by just in case everything falls through. Like in the production side start with a wide, then medium, then close up, in the editing stage we must start with the piece that is most necessary.

Therefore I started with the performance cut, because thats what the artists would want the most out over everything. I began by timing everything up with the clapperboard we recorded on the day and the timings in the timeline, making sure everything was in sync, I went on to cut the performance up so it flowed with the overall energy of the music.

Once I had done this I moved onto the narrative, which I mostly rushed due to the rough cut deadline, but it gave me a good structure to work from when I came back to it.

I did a lot of visual effects experiments to get the right look, some I had to let go do to it either not fitting the music video or looking awful.

Anyways hope you enjoy the video above which goes into this process in a bit more depth with sped up screen recordings of me editing.

the pickups

We only had one day to shoo the whole music video and I felt one of the most important aspects had been left out. The finally shot. The final shot in my vision was to have the girl who was dancing through out be shown in her real environment,  which would be a container. This is because the only relevance of the dancer was to indicate the next girl in line for these mens sick games.

So I got Cara back in to do the final shot of her in the container. I wanted to have a match cut from the dancing to cut to her in the container, so I directed her to do a spin and stare at the camera because in reality the person watching the music video is the real voyuer.

I used to red heads to light her. And used the blackmagics to film, with multiple prime lenses, 28mm 35mm and 50mm. I shot it in 4K and 50fps so I could slow down the footage but also scale out to fake a dolly move giving it a more surreal effect.

Cara is always great to work with and always gives great energy while taking it very serious. On the pickup shoot as I had the camera already set up. I decided to get some extra pickup shots of Jason (one of the old men) because I wanted to push my VFX shot of the camera going into the tv, into Jason's eye and then into the tv.

However, while filming Jason he was very difficult to work with mucking about and not taking it serious, and over all the shot just looked cheap when it came to the VFX editing stage.

[feedback] qualitative data from focus group

After showing the focus groups the rough cut and the album they had finished up there questionnaires and we began asking the focus group our open questions. Here is the video footage of their answers.

Here our are first set of questions about the digipak -

Overall I believe that the focus group liked the album cover, but has difficulty understanding the typeface and the origami swan looks a bit scrunched so for the final design it should be a better quality swan. They like the inside of the digipak ideas but not the designs.

Here our are second set of questions about the rough cut - 


my phone ran out of battery so we continued recording from Claudia's phone.

Overall from the feedback the focus group didn't understand the relevance of the dancer, this doesn't help that we haven't got the pick up shot. Another issue was that the audience believed the girl was hiding behind the tv. I would need to make it more apparent that the girls energy is being sucked into the TV I have vfx shot in mind. 

[feedback] quantitative data from focus group.

Today we had the opportunity to get our questions answered.  We where looking for feedback for our overall campaign and for our drafts and rough cuts.

We had assembled a focus group which is a group of people assembled to participate in a discussion about a product before it is launched, or to provide feedback on a political campaign, television series, etc.

We gave out roughly 20 questionnaires and this is the quantitive data we got back, after showing them the rough album designs and the rough cut.

First off here is the data back for the album artwork -

Overall I would conclude that this is very positive feed back about the album artwork, as you can see it is very clear that the album artwork appeared as it should and attracted the focus group. This is very much a success and I believe that we would just need to tweak it here and there to take it to the next level.

Here is the quantitive data for the rough cut -

Overall what I can conclude from the feed back is that overall the rough cut was liked by the majority, the majority liked the pacing and thought it was clear that the guys where in a band together, from the feedback I can move on with the edit and focus on critiquing the pacing and adding more of the dancer as the focus group seemed interested in that.

feedback questions for our digipack and music video.

So Monday we are going to showing our rough cut and digipack to a focus group and get there feedback.

Here are the questions we will give them -

DIGIPAK- CLOSED QUESTIONS

·      WHAT GENDER ARE YOU?

      WHAT IS YOUR AGE?

·      WHAT GENRE DO YOU THINK THIS DIGIPAK IS FOR?

·      IS IT EYE CATCHING?

·      DO THE COLOURS WORK?

·      WOULD YOU BUY THE DIGIPAK BASED ON THE ARTWORK?

·      DO THE TRACK TITLES AND ARTWORK WORK WELL TOGETHER?

·      DO THE TRACK TITLES WORK WITH THE GENRE THAT YOU THINK THE ALBUM BELONGS TO?

·      IS IT CLEAR THE ARTISTS ARE A BAND?

·      DO THE TRACK TITLES (THE BACK PAGE) WORK WITH THE GENRE?

DIGIPAK-OPEN QUESTIONS

·      WHAT ABOUT THE FRONT COVER DO YOU LIKE/ DON’T LIKE

·      WHY DO YOU THINK IT IS THAT CHOSEN GENRE?

·      WHY WOULDN’T YOU/WOULD YOU BUY THIS ALBUM?

·      WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE ABOUT THE DIGIPAK?

·      WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE USE OF THE FONT WE HAVE CHOSEN?

·      DOES IT BOTHER YOU THAT THE BAND AREN'T ON THE FRONT? WHY?

MUSIC VIDEO- CLOSED QUESTIONS

·      DID YOU LIKE THE MUSIC VIDEO?

·      DID YOU LIKE THE COLOUR SCHEME?

·      SHOULD THERE BE MORE SHOTS OF THE BAND?

·      WAS IT CLEAR THERES A LEAD IN THE BAND?

·      SHOULD THERE BE MORE SHOTS OF THE DANCER?

·      DID YOU LIKE THE COLOUR SCHEME?

·      SHOULD THE DANCER HAVE STARRED MORE?

·      DID WE INTRODUCE THE DIFFERENT ELEMENTS OF THE MUSIC VIDEO AT THE RIGHT TIME?

MUSIC VIDEO-OPEN QUESTIONS

·      DO YOU THINK THERE IS A LEAD ARTSIT IN THE BAND, IF SO WHY?

·      DO YOU THINK THE BANDS LOOK WORKS WITH THE GENRE, WHY?

·      DO YOU THINK THAT SOMETHING ELSE NEEDS TO BE ADDED, IF SO WHAT/ WHY IF NOT?

·      IS THE PACE FAST ENOUGH/ SLOW ENOUGH? WHICH ONE?

·      DID THE VIDEO HOLD YOUR ATTENTION IF SO WHY/ WHY NOT?

·      DID YOU UNDERSTAND THE SYMBOLISM BEHIND THE MUSIC VIDEO? WHAT WAS IT?

OVERALL QUESTIONS

·      DO YOU THINK THE GENRE IS THE SAME FOR THE DIGIPAK AND MUSIC VIDEO, WHY?

·      DO YOU THINK THE DIGIPAK AND MUSIC VIDEO WORK WELL TOGETHER AS AN OVERALL CAMPAIGN?

·      DO THE COLOUR SCHEMES LINK?

·      IS IT CLEAR THAT THE DIGIPAK IS NOT DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE SINGLE?

what is quantitative and qualitative research?

Quantitative and Qualitative research are two research methods that are used to get data from participant about a certain subject. While the two types of research both get information from a participant they both do this very differently.

Quantitative research aims to measure and quantify information, using numerical and statistical analysis. Its main focusing is quantifying info, the most common method of measure is surveys. Quantitative research focuses on closed questions for example yes and no questions, therefore there is a clear distinction and no information is left up to researchers interoperation.

advantages -researchers are able to measure and analyse data.
clear relationship between variables.
objective, standardised, empirical data. 

disadvantages -answers are restricted to a yes or no.
context of the experiment is ignored.
large population has to be used in order to gain generalisable results.

Qualitative research on the other hand focuses more on open ended questions, for example “How does the colour red make you feel?”. Qualitative research looks at info that often describes emotional and subjective responses using words, rather than numbers. Qualitative research is usually taken place on small groups of participants as it examines the subject in more depth and can be time consuming.

advantages - leads to more in-depth insights into subjects
does not require surveying large no. of people
using online focus groups it can be significantly less costly. 

disadvantages -does not give a specific measure
does not allow for extrapolating results.

rough cut 1

Over the past few weeks we have been working hard on completing a rough cut for our piece, so we could get feedback from our target market focus group. I will go in more detail about my editing process in a later post.
The rough cut can be used to show our focus group then we can get there feedback and develop on our video. This by no means near to the final product, I really had to rush this to get in online for the deadline.
Anyways here is the rough cut video below -