Beginnings of my Digipak

Having now completed my existing digipak research, I began to think of the image and sense of theme I wanted for my own. With this in mind I took a screen shot from our final footage of this split screen of the four of us.
I then edited it using PicMonkey online software in order to get a feel for the image and see whether it would work for a digipak, changing the saturation and shadowing in order to give us more of a presence in the image. I particularly like this image because of the use of sunlight in the background, which reflects our music video as well as that the four of us being in the image in a subtle way, which is a convention of indie rock digipaks that I found during previous research.
I aslo feel that this image is reflective of our indie rock genre as it presents a simplicity and ambiguity, often themes that are presented in an indie band.

Currently this is the beginnings of the creation of my digipak, I am yet to title the album and plan to document each stage. This image is an option that I shall continue to develop and perhaps may be included in my digipak, however I am yet to decide whether this image shall take the front cover or perhaps the inside/back. I am however, happy with the look and feel of this chosen image.

Indie Rock - Existing Digipaks

I thought it would be good to begin this process by researching into existing digipaks that fall within our 'Indie - Rock' genre. I began the research by searching indie rock bands and looking further into their digipaks and how they present themselves. I will then analyse them and identify potential similarities and differences

These are the three indie rock digipaks I looked into..

1) Indie American Folk band, Fleet Foxes digipak uses lots of colour in order to grab the audience, interestingly the band are not seen on the digipak cover, an element I will consider when planning and creating my own digipak. The image is busy and eye catching, the busy atmosphere may reflect the sound of their music being up beat, a typical convention of the indie- rock genre. Having noticed the only text on the album being 'Fleet Foxes' I researched and found that this debut album was titled after the band, rather than often choosing a separate album name. This research provides me with different media conventions of existing digipaks which I'm able to consider when creating my own.

  

2) Two Door Cinema Club is a Northern Irish Indie-Rock band, unlike Fleet Foxes this digipak includes an album title separate from the bands name 'Changing Of The Seasons'. The title layout of this digipak perhaps reflects a traditional written layout, with the title larger and a subheading written in a smaller font beneath it. The band uses a black and white image reflecting an older era, with closer inspection you are able to identify the band members within the image. This contrasts Fleet Foxes digipak where the band members are not presented, however Two Door Cinema Club perhaps subtly include themselves in the digipak. This research is highlighting the absence of Inide-Rock bands including themselves of the front of the digipak

3) My final 'Indie Rock' digipak I looked at was Arctic Monkeys, I decided to post this one as the digipak highlights the black and white saturation trend, seen also on Two Door Cinema Clubs digipak. Furthermore the digipak includes only a picture of the band, which is often not seen amongst indie rock genres. Through conducting this digipak research within our songs genre, I am able to create my own digipak with the knowledge of existing digipaks.

What is a Digipak?

Our Ancillary Task includes the creation and development of our own digipaks for our song, creating both an album and band title.

A digipak is a type of packaging for CDs or DVDs, typically made from cardboard with an internal plastic holder for one of more discs. 

This is an existing digipak of 'The Script' that I decided to document because the layout of a digipak can be clearly identified. These four images of the digipak are the four elements I will create.

This template of a digipak shows the four sections of a digipak, I will create the front cover, back credits, left inside cover as well as the design on the CD.

Sunrise - Opening Shot

This is our opening sunrise shot that we filmed in October at Alexandra Palace, were currently editing our final music video in detail. It was always our plan to use this sunrise shot at the beginning of our music video, this edited clip is longer, our final music video has the shot with increased speed. In order to create a softer lighting to the sunrise we adjusted the saturation during editing.

Our use of Kaleidoscope

As we have previously blogged, we included a kaleidoscope in our final film, having edited this section of our final music video, we wanted to share a short clip of it in order to document our progress. This kaleidoscope is seen throughout the chorus of our song, in order to create consistency, furthermore the connotations of the kaleidoscope suggest a laid back indie feel, which was an important atmosphere for us to create.
The kaleidoscope was created using existing footage from our Grovelands Park filming. We layered over the same clip four times, each time changing the rotation and opacity to create the kaleidoscope effect.

Progress

Recently we've been working hard on editing our final film, particularly with the deadline getting considerably nearer. We wanted to document our progress so we decided to edit this short clip of the four of us lip syncing "falling", this clip is seen during the chorus of the song, towards the end of our video, obviously accompanied by the song.