Final Draft of the Album Cover Thoughts

The album cover is looking pretty good in my opinion and its got a profesional feel to it. The stock image of the sea originally didn't look visual enough to be on the front cover. However, with some brightness and contrast, an ajustment of the vibrance and a change of colour it started to look really deep and interesting. That coupled with our text on top gave a nice powerful, striking effect for our front cover. Another thing I like about our digipak is that it contains images of all the band members playing live. This gives fans more content for their money and gives them something the video and myspace does not. The cover which features the portrait pictures of the band members is also a nice touch as it builds on the image of the band, which even though is not the focus, is still present for the fans. Moreover, the different colour backgrounds gives each member an identity, which is a technique we saw used in The Saturdays brand image. Overall I'm very pleased with the way our album cover turned out.

Further Reflections On The Editing

We are nearing the completion of our music video! I feel so relieved and also very proud of what we have achieved and although in hindsight I see a lot we could have improved on it is still a great music video in my opinion. One person in our class even stated that the video has even started to make them like the song.

In regards to the edit, we have only the introduction of the song to complete which is proving difficlt to make look unique. The shots in a general order look a bit boring and need something extra to the visual style to bring it to the standard of the rest of the music video. We have edited the framework of the introduction in order to prehaps get some inspiration on what to do. I feel that due to this part of the song being slow paced we need to emphasis that with slow fades and transitions which will in effect improve the fast paced sections of the song, making them look even more intense than they already do.

Editing Our Music Video

We have started to edit our music video togther and have come up with a clever way of achieving the fast cutting, to the beat editing we wanted. The idea involves getting all the takes of our performance and stacking them up in the timeline while also being in sync with the music. This way we can scroll through and be aware of all the footage we have at that particular part of the song. Moreover, using the razor tool we can cut up all of these clips on the beat of the song before deciding on the final shots. This allows us to simply delete the clips of the song we dont want, thus leaving the ones we do.

The edit has been going very well and we have been picking intervals in the song to edit together. We chose not to start from the beginning and finish on the end but rather work from the points in the song we feel most comfortable with. We happened to start with the day to night transition - a crucial moment in our video where the energy in the performance explodes!

The editing within the group is very even and we have all got our hands on the mouse aswell as given input in to our thoughts on how we want the video to look and play out. The great way about the way we edit (as mentioned above) is the fact that while one person may have his hand on the mouse, he's doing the same amount of work as the person sitting next to him. This is because they both have the same input in to what clips to keep and what to get rid of while the person at the computer simly deletes the unwanted clips. This has turned the edit in to a discussion which has really helped the development of our music video as all the group members are getting an equal say on how they want the video to look and also putting their stamp on the video itself.

Album Cover Conventions

What are the typical features that an album cover has?

- Band name and album title
- A distinctive often illustrative image
- Track listing on the back
- Record company
- Release year
- Copywrite infomation
- Lyrics booklet - infomation on the band members, lyrics, band webstie/contact details, thank you's and recording infomation.

How would you categorise the covers in front of you?

 Categorise by:

- Photos of artist
- Drawn/painted/computer generated conceputal image
- Photographic art
- Decade it was released
- Whether its a vinyl or CD
- Band or single artist
- Style of packaging - Digipak, CD case, Vinyl, extra sleeve.

Album Covers have many different functions. What do you think these are?

- Promote the artist
- Give infomation and details on the band
- Put across a message whther it be mundane or serious such as a political message
- Brands the artist giving them something the audience can relate to and identify with that person and nobody else.
- Interests the audience - they want to hear more music from the artist that they like, therefore an album has a purpose of pleasing and satisfying the audience.

Album Cover Analysis

LOSTPROPHETS - THE FAKE SOUND OF PROGRESS

Front Cover
- Artistic photo of them recording the album; immediately says that this is a band about the music not the image.
- Black and white which gives it an arty look.
- Electronic equipment; at first your not sure what your looking at.
- The album title is very small and doesn't stand out; located at the bottom of the image.
- A random action figure located at the top-right; this is almost a logo a lot of their dedicated fans will recognise.
- Even the title of the band name is small; you have to look for it as it doesnt jump out.

This is a very unconventional album cover as it is the bands first aswell. You would think that a bands first album would be about them and getting them recognised - building up a fanbase. Instead you have an album cover which isn't really giving any particular message. To me, what this does is put absolutely all the emphasis on the music and nothing on the image of the band. It is almost like this album cover was made only for the fans they already had has it doesnt really attract any new ones.