Creating Magazine Advert

The secondary part of our ancillary task is to create a magazine advert promoting our music video. Considering that our music video centers around distress and sadness we have based both of our ancillary products on this and have therefore made the photographs in black and white and some of the photographs convey Alice with smeared make up which relate back to our music video. As a group we chose the photograph which we thought would work well to express the whole feel of the album and song itself. We chose a photograph of Alice holding her hair up with a sad look on her face as she does this repeatedly in the music video.

The screenshot above portrays the photograph we chose to use in black and white which has been edited in Photo Shop. 

We decided to have a black background for our magazine advert as it links back to our CD cover which also has a black background. The actual photograph being in grey scale stands out more as an affect of this. We achieved this effect by using the 'Paint Tool' and 'Eraser Tool' around the edges of the photograph.

Highlighted above in the red rectangle conveys the areas on the photograph which were hardest to edit. For the image to look professional on the final cover we had to use the 'eraser tool' to create a smudged effect around the photograph. We got this idea from our research into the Adele magazine advert.

Placing the photograph on In Design on the black background highlighted the minor details which needed to be changed in order for our magazine advert to look professional.We were unsure of were to place the photograph as being close up, the top of the photograph was evident.

By opening the photograph on Photo Shop again we were able to adjust the outer spacing around the photograph and use the 'Eraser Tool' to create a bigger smudged effect and highlight Alice in the image. By using this effect on the photograph we are portraying Alice as the most important figure on the advert. This conveys continuity to our music video as the whole video is centered around Alice and her emotions.

The photograph was then placed on In Design again however the top of the photograph was still noticeable which we did not feel was professional. The only way we would be able to overcome this problem was by decreasing the size of the magazine advert, which in fact worked best for our advertisement as all of the information we needed to portray could still fit on the advert.

To keep strong continuity throughout our ancillary tasks we used the same font, colours and spacing on both of our ancillary products. This allows our target audience to relate both products together and become aware that the magazine advert is promoting the main song on our CD cover. The above screen shot conveys the texts we have used which are exactly the same on both products.

This was our predicted final product, however we received negative feedback from our teacher which suggested getting rid of the white outline as it did not look professional. 

I began editing the original photograph in order to get rid of the white smudged background. I did this on Photo Shop by using the 'Eraser Tool'. I have conveyed my editing in the screen shot below by highlighting the background behind Alice's arm in a red rectangle. It was extremely difficult to edit as I had to be sure that I did not erase away part of Alice's arm.

After removing the white edge around the picture I placed it back on the original magazine advert and as a group we decided to add more text about the product to increase interest in the final product as we thought it looked too plain.

I have highlighted on the screen shot above the changes that have been made within the production of our magazine advert. We centered the image of Alice to make her the most prominent feature on the advert as the advert is promoting her song. We added ratings from popular music magazines and newspapers which allow a link to be made into real media products as we have seen this on real magazine adverts in our research. We also changed the colour of the 'Available now' text box to draw more attention to the fact that her songs are available for purchase, we changed it to red which links with the red 'A' on the album front cover. We also added a 'Debut' text box with a date of release for the whole album so that our target audience of teenagers and young people were aware of when the whole album will be out for sale. We have used the same font throughout our whole production of both ancillary tasks as this promotes strong continuity and allows our target audience to link all of our products together.

I have highlighted above the similar factors between the newest magazine advert with our other ancillary task. By using the same features on both products we are able to link all of our work together to convey a clear thinking process. We aimed for our products to link together well in order to promote a strong product, we have used a picture of the frontal album cover on the magazine advert so that our target audience are aware of the album that is being promoted. We have also used the same 'SONY MUSIC' text from the CD disk and back of album cover on the magazine advert to portray the music company which links to real media products. By making these changes to our magazine advert we have been able to create a more professional looking advert and it also looks less plain and simple by adding more information about the product we are promoting.

This is our final magazine advert:

Creating Spine of Album

Our Digi pack has four aspects which need to be completed, they are the front cover, the back cover the CD disk and the spine of the cover. In this post I will convey how I created the spine of the cover. This was the most simple aspect of the Digi pack as it was the smallest. Considering that the album was in itself black and white my group and I decided to make the spine black with white writing. 

The print screen above conveys the black spine of the album and the white writing which resembles the artists name and album name. We have used the same font throughout the whole ancillary task to convey continuity and to allow the audience to become aware of the artists style. I have highlighted this in the print screen above by framing the specific parts in a red square. 

This is the finished spine of the album, it relates to the rest of the Digi pack and they all fit well together. I have used the exact same font, size and spacing between letters as the front cover to provide strong continuity throughout our product.

Creating the CD disk

As well as creating the front, back and spine of the album we also have to produce a CD disk to go inside the album case. We decided as a group to produce a simple disk which relates to both our music video and our Digi pack. As the majority of our Digi pack is black we decided to have a black disk with white writing. The font used is the exact same as the front and back cover which conveys our continuity throughout the ancillary tasks. 

After spacing out the text using the 'Character' box on In Design I was able to place the text at the top of the CD so it would be the first aspect of the disk that the audience would see. We used an extra white circle in the middle of the CD to break up the dark colour.

We prominently based our CD disk layout around the Rihanna 'Talk That Talk' CD disk as we thought this layout suited our theme best. The dark background matches our photographs and other ancillary task and by using the same fonts we are able to convey strong continuity. We have placed the name of the album and artist name in the same place as Rihanna however we have switched the two to make the album name more prominent as this is the main focus of the album and our music video. We also added the producer information and broadcasting details at the bottom of the CD covers copyright laws, this is a direct link to real media products.   

This is our final CD disk:

The plastic behind this CD disk will be clear with no colour because we do not want anything to distract the attention away from the CD disk - we also feel as a group that this would be the most professional outcome on our final product.

Sketches of Magazine Cover

After researching magazine adverts we were able to sketch our ideas of what we would like our advert to look like. We will be using one of the photographs from our previous photo shoot in order to create this magazine advert. 

The advert will need to contain:

• A feature of the album cover
• Artists name and Album name
• a theme that links all of the products together
• text which conveys responses e.g. newspapers 

The font we will be using will be the same the whole way through all of the ancillary tasks to highlight the continuity, as well as the strong theme of black and white with some aspects of the writing in red. The photograph we want to use is of Alice holding her hands against her head in distress much like her emotions in the music video. We are basing the magazine advert heavily on the advert by Adele which is in black and white and contains the same theme as her album cover, which we have also used in our research. Hopefully by sketching out how we want our ancillary tasks to appear we will have extra guidance when producing the final product.

Sketches of Digi Pack

In order to create the Digi Pack we have to sketch out our ideas, this would help us in the production of the product. We can decide on the layout of the product and the colours we want to use in order for the ancillary task to look as professional as possible.

The first drawing was a practice of a few of our ideas, the front cover conveys Alice covering her face with her hands and the back cover presents the song titles out in clear and a smaller picture of Alice sitting with her hands on her face at the bottom of the back cover. This cover is really simple however we decided against it as we wanted Alice's face to be visible on the album cover.

 The second sketch was more successful as we took a look back at the photo shoot and chose a photo to use. We want the photograph on the album cover to be in black and white as this will link to our previous research into album covers. We decided to have the title of the album spread out across the bottom of the case and Alice's initial in the top left hand corner. Alice is wearing the same make up and clothing as in the music video which conveys the continuity throughout our work as this single would be the main song in the album, as the title of the album reflects the song lyrics.

 The back cover on the album contains another photo of Alice in black and white, similar to the frontal image. However in this image Alice has smeared make up and a saddened emotion on her face. We chose this image as it links directly to the music video. We also decided to place Alice's name vertically on the back cover as her name was not featured on the front cover, it also links to the way Adele prints her name on the back of her cover. The background will be black and the song titles will be in white using the same font throughout the digi pack.

The actual CD disk we decided should be fairly plain, much similar to the disks we have been researching. We decided to use a gradient effect from black to white/grey to make the disk look more original rather than all black and for it to still link together with the case. We have strong continuity too as the album title and Alice's name will be placed on the disk using the same font and spacing technique.

The inside of the Digi Pack will be clear; as well as the space behind the CD disk and we feel this would be the most professional way to present our final product. We will not be having another photo or a colour as it is unnecessary and we think it will look better without this.

Specific research into CD Disk Covers

Another section of the Digi Pack is the actual CD, which needs to be produced. I have researched the CD covers of the main album I have been basing the album cover on, which is Rihanna. The CD covers contain the same themes as the outer case which creates continuity which is what we would like to achieve in our work.

We have already decided that our CD disk and the whole digi pack will have strong continuity throughout to be sure that it links well with our music video. The main themes on the digi pack are black and white with a slight impact of colouring with a red 'A' on the front cover which resembles Alice's first initial. We want the artists name and album name on the CD disk as this proves good continuity.

The first cover I looked at was from Rihanna's 'Talk That Talk' album which contains the same letter 'R' on the front album case, however it has been tilted to the side. It works well however this CD looks too difficult to create especially due to our limited ICT programmes.

I then began to look at other types of CD's that Rihanna has produced and came across her 'Good Girl Gone Bad' album which contained the CD seen below. I like the use of a plain black background and this would link back to CD case, and the CD looks simple yet it looks professional. By using the name of the artist and the album name on the CD gives strong continuity which we will have on our CD disk.

After looking closely at both of these CD disks I will now go on to create our CD disk for our digi pack. I will try to incorporate ideas from both of these covers into our disk and prove this by comparing them as I produce them.

Comparing our work to real media products

Looking back at our research I have decided to compare our current work to the music videos we have based our ideas on to decide whether or not we are on the right track to creating a good music video. We are largely basing our own music video on the original which allows us to constantly compare our work back and see if we are making the right decisions to do with camera angles and shots.

We decided to use the bath scene and focus on the bath filling up by filming the taps running:

We focused on Alice looking at herself in the mirror which was very similar to Katy Perry's video 'Part  Of Me' as she re evaluates her life and her image:

Although we used a different camera angle to the original, this shot conveys Alice getting in the bath which is similar to the original:

We asked Alice to sit in the bath and look around anxiously because we wanted to convey her emotions to the audience:

By doing this I have become aware of the types of shots we need to improve such as better close ups and clearer camera angles. We will continue to compare our work back to the original music videos to be sure that our work is of a good standard.

Looking into Camera Angles

After editing the bench seen it has been made aware that in some of the shots Alice looks to be in control. For example when the camera is below Alice she is the most important figure in the shot however to the audience she seems  dominant, which we do not want her to be. If we have the camera facing down on Alice, it would belittle her and prove her to be the inferior character; which would go well with our story line of Alice being confused and unsure of her current situation. The majority of scenes in music videos and films are eye level when two characters are having a conversation, although when there is a power imbalance the camera angles change to make the situation clearer to the audience.

Here are some shots from our previous filming, they convey Alice being the dominant character within the scenes. This is clear to the audience as Alice seems to be closer to the camera and the main focus.

We now need to re film the bench scene and be sure to shoot the filming with the camera facing down on Alice to convey her to be the inferior character. 

Research into back of album covers

In order to create our ancillary task we need to research each part of the album cover. I have already researched the front of the album cover however now we need to research how the back of album covers are presented in the music industry and try to compare this to our own work. As we have been basing our album cover on the work of Adele and Rihanna I will look at how these artists represent their work on the back of their albums.

This cover from Adele is very dark as it represents her meaningful music and lyrics. Our chosen song and artist also have the same feel as this however I am unsure whether to use a black background. This cover works well as the back picture of Adele is contrasting to the front image of her looking at the camera with a cigarette. The songs are listed together and labelled clearly.

The same background is used on Rihanna's album, it does however contain more information about the writers and producers of each song and the image of Rihanna is in colour compared to Adele's album cover. The image is a whole body shot and conveys her as aggressive. The barcodes on both albums are necessary due as they need to be sold to the audience. I prefer the album cover from Adele for its simplicity although I do like the element of colour in Rihanna's cover.

Spine of Cover:

I have been researching each part of a CD digipack in order to make our group album cover the best it could be with our resources  I have been influenced by the covers of Adele and Rihanna so far and have recently been looking at the spines of the covers to ensure that I keep a steady continuity I will continue to look at these types of artists. I own Rihanna's album cover and so I am able to look closely at a hard copy and make decisions as to what I like and dislike about the cover.

I have highlighted the areas on my own album cover which we would have to recreate. The first image on the left hand side is of the spine of the cover which reads the artists name and album name. The other four things highlighted are from the back of the album and are things such as barcodes, album producers and ownership rights. 

Creating Back of Album Cover

When creating the back of the album cover my group and I have had to choose another photograph from the ones we have taken and I will then go on to produce the back of the album cover based on our research.

We have decided to use another photograph of Alice with no smeared make up and those are for the magazine advert, as they represent the song we used in our music video and by using one of Alice with normal make up, we are giving the impression that not all of the songs on the album are as depressing as the one we have chosen.

We have decided to use this photograph of Alice as she is in a different position and has a different expression on her face, although it will take a lot of editing to sort out the background. We are basing the back of the album cover on the research we have recently completed from artists such as Adele and Rihanna.

After some discussion we came to the conclusion of not using this photograph as Alice is not facing straight towards the camera and the editing was becoming too difficult. We wanted an image which was not as similar to the front cover and so without her hand on her face. I attempted to get rid of the chair behind Alice using the Clone Tool in Photo Shop, however it just made the image look worse.

We chose this photograph as it was different to the front cover and Alice has a different expression, although she has smeared make up this could convey her main single on the album.

As a group we have previously decided that we wanted our album cover in black and white much similar to Adele's as we thought it looked more professional and had a deeper meaning than the more powerful colourful images.

By opening the picture in Photo shop I was able to use the effects from the program to edit the image into black and white, and use the different effects in order to get the right amount of white to back contrast on the photograph.

I experimented with a few of the effects however after asking the opinions from the rest of my group we decided on using the 'Halftone Pattern' effect as it made the photograph lighter as well as in black and white. This was the photograph after I changed the colour effects:

After looking back at our research into back of album CD covers I noticed that the main background colour was black. I like the way that in Adele's album cover the back image has a smudged effect which I would like to incorporate into the final product as it looks more professional and less tacky. I will try to incorporate this by experimenting with the background colour to make it darker. 

I changed the effects of the background at first so I could change the colour afterwards. I left the outline around Alice's face so it would stand out against a darker background. I did this by changing the diameter of the brush size and making the hardness of the brush a little less to create a blurred effect around Alice. The background of the image changed into grey and white checkered squares to highlight the effects I have made.

In the image below I have highlighted the areas which were most difficult to edit as Alice's hair was quite messy and back combed and so I had to zoom into these areas and carefully edit them to make them less messy.

I used the paint tool to create a black background on the edited photograph. It was simple to use and improved the image immensely in my opinion. The colour used is the same as the album cover from Adele and I feel works well with the chosen photograph as Alice has smeared black make up around her eyes, which conveys her sadness and the colour black is known to be linked with deep emotion.

The edited image below was the outcome after I had changed the background colour. I showed by group this photograph and they were pleased with the progress. I am happy with the outcome as Alice is dominant in the photograph and her emotion and facial expression relates to the music video we made and the theme of the whole album.

I then opened another page in the same program, and began to create the other aspects of the back cover such as song titles. My group and I decided to use the same font on the back cover as we did on the front to convey continuity to our target audience. We decided that the album should contain ten songs altogether as it was practical, we used song names from a range of albums by Pink, the artist of our chosen song, to be sure that all of the song titles were linked to sadness, anger and vulnerability. This meant that the whole album would have strong continuity. 

After changing all of the song title fonts to the same as the front cover I decided to 'Place' the edited image of Alice onto the cover so I could visually see the layout on the screen.

I chose the edited image from my saved files and dragged it into the position on the back cover. I also moved the song names to the top as they were hidden under the photograph after it was place.

Once I had placed the photograph I noticed that the top and bottom of the photograph were visible on the black background and so I asked my group how to overcome this. Lauren suggested moving the image higher and leaving a gap at the bottom, Jessie then agreed as this would leave space for more writing and information about music producers etc which the other album covers have. I then continued to move the photograph to the top of the cover and add more aspects to the image.

The red rectangle in the image above conveys the difference in colour, however once I have added information about the producing of the music etc hopefully it will not be as visible. If this does not go to plan I will have to add an effect to the photograph in order to blur our the sharp line.

I moved the song titles away from the image so I could focus on the other aspects of the whole back cover. As a group we decided to have Alice's name on the back cover similar to Adele's album. We also thought it would be a good idea as her name is not on the front cover, just her initial. We decided to rotate her name by 90 degrees anti-clockwise which resembles the same layout as Adele's album.

This was the finished image without adding the song titles and information to do with music at the bottom of the photograph. We as a group were happy with this as it resembled the same layout as Adele's. I used the same font throughout however I changed the thickness of the font as I had to increase the size of the word.

I then began to add the song titles onto the photograph closely together, just to see how it would all look. I will carry on moving the song titles until we as a group are happy with their placing. I will probably move them upwards and space them out a bit more. However, Alice's face will still be the most dominant image on the cover.

During the production of the back of the CD cover I asked for some feedback from my group as to how to change some aspects if they were not working well. The main discussion we had focused on the bottom of the photograph as it has a sharp distinctive line near the bottom of the cover. We agreed to fade out the image much like the outside of the photograph. I will now go on to edit the photograph again in order for it to look more professional in the final outcome.

I have highlighted the areas above which I will use to change the photograph. By using a gradient effect on the bottom of the image I will be able to change the photograph and make the bottom of the picture lighter in order to diminish the distinctive line.

The gradient tool was ineffective to our photograph and so I decided to edit the background in the same way I edited the photograph edges by making them softer and so the distinctive photograph line will disappear. I used the areas highlighted in the image above such as colour and paint to change the photograph and make Alice look almost ghostly in the image. I feel this is effective and this image reflects the whole feel of the album and conveys a deep sadness in her expression. I will now replace this image on the final cover.

The above image conveys the final edited photograph on the back cover. My group and I are content with this image as it looks better than the image before. I will now go on to adjust the text around the cover and add the final aspects of the back cover.

I will need to create a barcode on the back cover to make the cover eligible to be sold, I will make the barcode on Microsoft word using the shape tool and will add numbers to be sure that I am not breaking any copyright laws.

The screen shot above shows the bottom of the back cover with the barcode in place. The product would not be able to be sold without a barcode and so can now be comparable to real media products. 

The print screen above portrays the back of cover in its current state, the picture has been placed just left of the center with all of the song names in place. So far my group and I are happy with the progress of this aspect of the Digi pack.

Looking back at our research into back of album covers, I became aware of the bonus tracks that Adele has added to her album which were probably added to boost album sales and may even be songs that were not released prior to the album being sold and so this would provoke interest from her target audience. We have used this aspect in our final back cover to make the album look more realistic and the song names are all from the original artist of P!nk, the singer of our chosen song.

The album cover also needs terms and conditions present on the case to make the audience aware of the copy right laws and the company which have produced the product. I have left a blank space at the bottom of the cover for this information and the writing will all be written in the same font as the rest of the album to convey continuity and have a professional outcome. 

In the screen shot above I have highlighted the way in which Rihanna has set out her technical information on her album cover compared to the way in which we have presented ours. Due to our cover not being a real music album I have used our names instead of real executive producers and given Alice her own website which is similar to both Rihanna and Adele's albums. By having their own website, music artists are able to update their fan base regularly with tour date information and news, they can also do this by social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The image above conveys the final back of album cover. Overall my group and I are very happy with the outcome as we have followed our research carefully and the sketches have ensured that we kept to the layout we had previously planned.