Album Poster Plan

After talking to members of my target audience, I have discovered that the majority of people feel that the artist should be on the album and poster rather than the couple, because this will show that he has created the album. In addition I recognise that it is conventional within the genre of indie/alternative rock for the cover to either feature a photo of the artist or cartoons / drawings / artwork. Therefore I have decided to create an album cover with a photo of Jonny and his guitar on the front as this will show what style of music he plays. In addition the same image will be included in my album magazine advert in order to create a sense of cohesion between my three products. Below are the sketches which I have created and labelled in order to show the ideas I have for the the album poster. The labelling includes explanation of each idea and details of colour, layout, writing, location, editing and conventions.

Final Video

This is our final music video. We have adapted some shots in terms of brightness, saturation and contrast. We have also added in some more transitions and have made the necessary changes to the timing of certain shots and transitions. In addition I have changed the title scene from black with a white font, to an image which I created using photoshop of a map with the artist name and track written in the font used for my ancillary tasks; this will create a sense of cohesion between my products and shows that they are connected. We are very please with the final cut as we have had great feedback and we feel that our video fits with the storyline and genre of the song.

Album cover initial ideas

This is a set of drawings which I have done which show the ideas I have come up with so far for my album cover. Some of them feature just Jonny, some feature the new couple and some feature all 3 cast members. The majority at based on Exmouth beach or in Ottery St Mary's park as I think that they're very pretty and natural places and the theme of nature is convention of alternative rock music. I plan to take some when the sun is bright and some when the sun is setting. I need to decide whether to feature Jonny or the couple; in order to assist this decision I will be asking members of my target audience for their opinion. The facial expression of the cast will be essential as it needs to show how each character is feeling and tell the story in one still image - if I use a photo of Jonny he will need a serious facial expression to express sadness and heartbreak, where as if I use a photo of the couple they will need to look happy.

Digipak deconstructions

In the following presentation I have deconstructed some already existing digipaks in order to learn the conventions of these; this will assist me in planning and creating my digipak.

Research - A Rocket to the Moon's album cover

Below is a presentation which I have created in order to deconstruct A Rocket to the Moon's album - That Old Feeling. As we be creating our own album cover it will be helpful to analyse other alternative rock videos, as it will further my insight into how an album cover is put together and why certain decisions are made; this will assist us in making decisions when we plan and make our album cover.

Artist name

We have deicide to create a 'stage name' for Jonny, as after talking to our peers we found that it was felt that jokes could be made about the name Jonny. Therefore we have chosen to call him Jono as this is a short and catchy name which is very similar to his real name. In addition I feel that it would fit well and look good on an album cover because it can be bold and can be read and remembered very quickly and easily. We discussed using his full name, however we felt that a shorter name would be easier to remember and more noticeable  Additionally we considered names such as John, Jon, Jonathan or Jonty and also discussed some very different name such as Hayden or Austin, however we felt that Jono was most suitable because it is catchy and easy for people to remember.

Research - Magazine adverts

In the slideshow below I have deconstructed 2 poster style magazine adverts which promote bands albums. I have then looked at 2 adverts which promote more than one thing, for example a tour and a single. This poster style magazine advertisement is very common within music magazines, therefore I plan on making my magazine advert look like a poster. By looking at adverts similar to the type it has become clear that conventionally alternative rock album advertisements use a range of natural, pastel colours (rather than bright colours that pop adverts conventionally use), additionally alternative style posters are usually quite simple, as this could suggest that the band focus simply on music. I believe that Jake Bugg's advert stands out because it is simple and black and white; this focuses the attention on him and his guitar. This has inspired me to create an album quite similar to his, in terms of position of the artist, facial expression, location, and I will also experiment with the use of black and white.

Research - The Maine's album cover

I have deconstructed The Maine's cover for their album - Black and White. As I will soon have to put together my own album cover this will be really helpful because it will further my insight into how an album cover is composed and why certain decisions are made; this will assist me in making decisions when I plan and make my album cover.

Research - We Are The Ocean's advert

Ancillary - key terms

I have created a 'Wordle' map to show they key terminology which relates to the promotional package we are required to create. These are all words which I will need to consider when planning and creating my poster and album cover. Many of the words relate to the creation process, such as 'editing', 'framing' and 'picture quality', it will be important that I bare these in mind in order to ensure that my final products are appealing and eye catching. Other words focus on things which I will need to include on my promotional products, such as 'website' and 'font'. In addition I will also need to show a 'connection' between my video and my poster; there will need to be cohesion. During the planning stage I will need to carry out 'research', 'deconstructions' and 'sketch' out my ideas. In order to create a successful package I will need to remember to consider 'target audience' and 'cross media promotion' as these will be essential in creating a buzz about our video; if this was an official project cross media promotion would encourage the audience to watch the video and buy the album. I will create a 'digipak' as this is just like an album cover but it folds away and often includes more images and extras such as 'artist information' and 'lyrics', this will be more popular with my target audience as it will be more visually appealing and will also be more environmentally friendly because there is no need for a plastic album case. 

Ancillary Tasks - initial planning

As part of this project we are required to create an album cover and a magazine advert to promote the album. For the album cover task I have decided to create a digipak as recently it has become very popular to create 'digipaks' instead of simple albums because they are more eye catching, interesting and eco friendly as they are made of card and paper and therefore do not require a plastic case. 


For this reason I have chosen to make a digipak; this will take more planning, however I feel that it would be far more eye catching and appealing for my target audience as it will have more pictures and information such as information about the artist, track lists and a message from the artist. The image to the right shows an example of a digipak. 





After researching promotional packages I have decided to make a magazine advert which looks like a poster as this is a style of advert which is commonly used throughout music magazines, particularly on the inside front cover and on the final page of the magazine. An example of this style of advert is Biffy Clyro's advert in Kerrang! magazine. This poster style advert filled an entire page and was therefore very eye catching, therefore I feel that creating a magazine advert which looks like a poster will draw the eye and encourage as many people to buy the album as possible. I plan on writing the artists website address and twitter page on the poster style adverts as this will encourage my audience to go to these sites, find out more and possibly buy more music or merch or watch music videos. This technique is known as cross media promotion. 

Promotional Package research

In order to decide what style of poster I should create I have decided to research what other bands and artists have done to promote their albums. In the slideshow below I have looked at the ways in which other bands have promoted their albums; this will help me make decisions about the style of advert I should create in order to advertise Jono's album as successfully as possible, whilst still being realistic about the costs of this in reality.



As an A2 level student I am only required to make an album cover and a magazine advert, however in reality a promotional company would need to do far more than this to reach as many people as possible. Therefore if I worked within the industry and was to promote a real music video I would not only use a page of a magazine to promote the album, but I would also use websites such as twitter, facebook and youtube; I would also advertise through Spotify as many music lovers use it. In addition I would create a tour poster and incorporate the album design into this in order to cross promote. Another way in which many promotional teams advertise is through posters and billboards; I am going to make a poster style advert for the magazine advert as this is very common within music magazines and is most eye catching, however many artists who have money to spend on advertising also use large posters and billboards in towns and cities (particularly near music stores and venues) in order to promote albums.

Editing - Slow motion

This screen recording shows how I edited a clip of the couple throwing leaves into the air in order to make it slower so that it would fit with the soft/indie rock style of music. I watched all the different shots we filmed of the couple doing this and then chose the most suitable one based on length, angle, acting and how the leaves were thrown. I felt that the original was quite fast paced and therefore didn't fit with the steady beat of the song; it is conventional to edit on the beat within music videos and therefore I wanted the clip to fit well with the song in order to do this. In addition I also felt that by using slow motion the scene would focus more on the fun they have as a couple, where as the original speed gave very little insight into their relationship because it did not fill enough time for people to see their happy facial expressions. For these reasons I converted the clip in order to enable the pace to be edited, and I changed the speed to 50%.

Audience feedback about our rough cut

After showing our rough cut to our peers we have received very positive feedback about it. Our class mates believed that our video is appealing because it has a strong narrative and fits with the song well. One person said "The story would be clear even if the song was not playing, you don't need the lyrics to understand what is happening", this suggests that we have been successful in following the storyline and creating a visual representation of the lyrics. It was also expressed that everybody felt a lot of sympathy for Jonny's character, as the rain, the sad music and Jonny's facial expression makes it obvious that he is upset; in addition, by showing how happy the new couple are, our audience believed that we have created more sympathy for Jonny's character as it emphasises how alone he is and shows what his relationship with Jess' character could have been like.

I also put our rough cut on facebook and asked people to give me some feedback about it. Below is a screen shot of their comments...

Similarly to our class peers, our audience on facebook have suggested that the storyline fits well with the music and lyrics, in addition it has again been said that we have successfully created sympathy for Jonny's character. I am very happy with the feedback I have got from peers on facebook. It has been very positive and has helped us ensure that our filming and editing has been successful and that our video is appealing to our audience.

Rough Cut

Below is a rough cut of our video. We watched our footage and selected the best shots to include in out video, we have edited this together and experimented with editing the exposure, contrast, brightness and saturation of shots in order to show the emotions of the characters. We have also explored using transitions in order to make the scenes connect and flow. We will get audience feedback about our rough cut so that we know what changes to make for our final video.

Editing - Transitions

I have captured a screen recording of part of the editing process - within the video I am adding some transitions to our film in order to make the video flow well, this is important as it will make our video better quality and more appealing for an audience because the change from one scene to another will be smooth.

In order to add transitions I picked three shots which I felt did not flow or connect very neatly, I then chose two types of transition from the menu; I drag and dropped these into the gaps between each shot and lowered the time each transition takes, in order to keep up the quick pace of the video and efficiently change from shot to shot. 

I chose 'Cross Dissolve' for the transition between the two dunes shots as the shots relate to one another and the transition needed to show that the two shots are connected and Cross Dissolve overlapped the two shots and then reveals the second shot. On the other hand for the change between the dunes shot and the shot of Jonny in the rain I decided to use 'Cross Blur' because this blurs the sand dunes shot and then shows the next shot; I feel that this suggests that the scenes are not related as it does not merge the shots together. For a similar reason I chose to time the first transition to 0.2s and the second transition to 0.3s in order to create a slightly larger gap between the dunes shot and the shot of Jonny, so that it would be clear that they're separate.