Digipak Research: Form & Conventions

1) What is a digipak and how is it similar/different to an album cover?

- A digipak is a patented style of CD or DVD packaging. Digipak-style packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of CD albums. They typically consist of a gatefold (book style) paperboard or cardboard outer binding, with one or more plastic trays holding a CD or DVD connected to the inside.

- The differences between a digipak and an album cover are:

• Digipaks give a product an expensive and professional look and feel about it, especially when they are well designed.
• Digipaks are made out of cardboard whereas normal CD cases are made out of plastic.
• Digipaks can usually fit more than one CD inside. For example there are digipaks that can include up to four CDs.

2) What does a digipak net look like and how many faces are usual?

- A digipak usually has four faces, however they can have up to six or even eight faces.



Four faced net:

Six faced net:

3) What do we usually find on the various faces of a digipak?

-Front cover- on the front cover you usually find an image of the artist to ensure they are memorable and the name of the album.

-Back cover- on the back cover you usually find the track list and digital extras. Also the barcode or possibly another image of the artist or the record label logo.

-Inside cover- on the inside cover you could find a lyric book.

-CD tray- is often not a particularly detailed image, but an image that compliments the brand.

4) Does there need to be a connection between the faces on the digipak?

Yes, there does need to be a clear connection between all of the faces on the digipak in order to create a very coherent image of the artist for the audience to understand.

Artist's Identity and Brand Image

These are some words and images that I believe sum up my artist's identity/brand image:

Effects we tried in our music video

We tried a number of effects from Final Cut Express, including the dissolves, the opacities, the different effects and many more. We used about 4 or 5 different effects and transitions in our music video. Some of the effects we tried were - Slow Motion and Dissolves.

My Input

Overall filming and editing has been going really well for our group as we took on slightly separate roles. I took charge with Ellie on the first day of filming when we filmed the couple in the music video. We directed and did the camerawork together, whereas this was Jasmine's weaker point so she observed and we showed her how to work the cameras. However on the second day of filming I was not there so Ellie and Jasmine helped out each other and directed and filmed our singer Jess.

I found that the editing and lip syncing was my weakest point throughout the coursework, but this was Jasmine's strongest point so she took charge of this part whilst Ellie and I observed her, learnt how to edit and spoke our opinions on what should go where. However Ellie and I had a go at putting transitions and effects in our music video.

Problems and Issues

Problems and Issues we as a group overcame:

- At the beginning, our first chosen artist was confirmed to be untrustworthy after the first couple of weeks of planning. As a result of this, we as a group had to make a choice to email Gabrielle Aplin's manager, asking for permission to use her song as our second choice. Ultimately we didn't use our first artist as we got permission to use Gabrielle's song.

- The first filming day, Jasmine couldn't make it for the first couple of hours, so Ellie and I had to continue without her. Later on Jasmine finally joined us, and Ellie and I showed Jasmine what had been shot while she was not there.

- From the first day of filming, we noticed that we had changed our storyboard a bit as we filmed pointless parts, which didn't fit with the storyline told in the song. We overcame this by cutting the unnecessary parts out.

- The second filming day we had to film our artist's lip syncing. I couldn't be there at all during that day as I had family commitments and Ellie could only come for the last 2 hours of filming. This meant Jasmine had to control most of the filming. This was overcome because Jasmine knew exactly what was needed to film

- Since our group used a different camera, we had problems uploading our footage onto Final Cut Express. We managed to overcome this by getting help from our school technician.

Editing

Editing our music video is going really well, we have all been doing different parts of the editing. We have got a lot of footage of the couple's relationship and of the singer. All of our cutting of the different shots mirrors the beat to the song. Although we had a slight problem where in one of the shots of our singer Jess forgot one of the words of the song. However we overcame this by cutting that part of the clip.

Recce Shots

These are some images of the different locations based in the same area that we have used in our music video. The reason we used these places is because of the autumn season the location looked romantic.