Ancillary Task - Where Would Our Advert Be Advertised?

Obviously to make our advert effective, it needs to be in right place, putting our music magazine in the wrong place means our target audience, wont be able to see the advert. This will have a profound effect on how our advert will be designed. We have decided to put our advert in NME magazine, because we pinpointed that publication as the place where our target audience was most likely to take notice of an advert.

NME was first published in 1962, and is now distributed weekly around the UK. It originally started off as a music newspaper but now has undertaken more of magazine format in recent years. NME started it's website in 1996 and has since become a successful place for web news about music.

Our target audience, which is primarily aimed at young people, both men and women. We have aimed our media product at people aged 15-20, as this will be the sort of age where people will be listening to this music, people at this sort of age would most likely be students and are normally the type of people who enjoy listening to music the most.

Ancillary Task - Analysis Of Two Magazine Adverts

The first magazine advert we have decided to analyse is from the band Kasabian. They are a UK rock group who since their self titled debut album in 2004, are now one of the biggest bands in Britain. This advert was taken from NME in March 2009. It was a double page spread in the centre of the magazine, this advert helped advertise their tour dates and song. This was printed a few months before their 3rd album 'West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum', which charted at the top of the album charts. Firstly, discovering this was in the middle pages of NME contributed to how effective this was. Normally there are no adverts in the middle pages of NME, making this a 'one off', also this could then be pulled out and used as a poster. Having an advert right in the middle is a great place for exposure, and is almost as good as being on the front cover, as nearly everyone who reads the magazine, will go past the middle pages and see this. If you were to put this advert at the back of the magazine where similar adverts would go, you probably woud'nt get it seen as much, as not everyone reads the whole thing. Across the top the bands logo is large across the top, making it obvious who's advert it is. The picture on the right hand side is quite an iconic photo as it makes the singer look like a good front man. All the tour dates on the left hand side are basically an advert in its self, as when people see how many dates they are playing in big venues like Brixton Academy, people who may not have known the band will see that they are actually a very successful band. The advert also promotes the bands new single, and the forthcoming album.

The second advert i chose to analyse is one by The Stone Roses, this advert is promoting the re release of the bands debut classic 'The Stone Roses'. The album is considered to be one of the best of all time, and also believed to be a near perfect album. This 20th anniversary special is the original album with demo's and rarities included. The album originally came out in 1989 and in 2009, the album was remastered and re packaged, and was advertised in all types of music magazines. It obviously worked well, as the album reached number 5 on its re release. This advert fits in with the general colour scheme of the album, with blue, red and white being some of the main colours on the cover. It uses the bands font, and incorporates the band's logo, the lemon, which also features on the original album cover. The advert then has plenty of quotes around the outside braising the album, with the best, by NME, at the top and the biggest in the front. Just like we plan to do in our magazine advert, they have used a HMV logo in the bottom right hand corner, to show where you can buy it, and the label that the band released the album on in 1989. This advert can be very effective as the quotes used praise the album, which then makes people want to listen to the album, to see if it matches their expectations of it.

Both adverts are very simple, with a minimalistic approach to design with only a few quotes, we will take all this into account when we design our advert for our song.

Ancillary Task - Digipak Template

Here are some template ideas that we have decided on. All of them are different and fold up in different ways. The digipak template is really important because if its not the right style for our genre of music then the whole digipak design will be affected.

We will have to make the digipak appeal to our target audience. This will be achievable if we analyse other artists DigiPak's that fall under the same genre.

The first DigiPak template is a 6 Panel 1 CD design. By using this design we can have a variety of different panels, with different pictures; lyrics and any other information the fans want too see. We feel that this one is most suitable for our DigiPak and will base our design around this.

The middle DigiPak template is a 4 Panel 1 CD design. This is the most common DigiPak scene in the industry. As there is only 4 panels, this doesnt leave us with enough space to add any other relevant information we may need to give the fans.

The bottom DigiPak is a complicated 8 Panel 1 CD design, in which the panels can be opened out to form a long poster type image. All the information needed can be fitted onto this particular DigiPak leaving enough room for a front cover, back cover and lyrics.

Ancillary Task - Final Digipak Design Analysis



Ancillary Task - Magazine Advert Examples

Ancillary Task - Magazine Advert

What is a magazine advert?
In order to promote our band, song and album, we need to advertise it as many places as possible. A good place to advertise it is in appropriate magazines, tv channels, websites, etc. For our magazine advert we have to ddesign it and also decide which publication it would go in.

We decided as our song fits under the genre of 'Indie' it would be most appropriate in a magazine like NME or maybe even Q. The reason for primarily choosing NME is that we will be ablke to reach our targe audioenmce for the song in that magazine. It's important we do that, as if we advertised our song in, for example, 'Metal Hammer', our avertisement campaign would probably not be that successful, as the readership of that magazine, would probably not listen to 'indie' music.

I will analyse other similar adverts to help gain inspiration and idea's for our advert, to make them as effective as possible.

Ancillary Task - What is a Digipak?

A definition of a DigiPak we found is - 'An innovative approach to packaging CD-Audio, CD-ROM and DVD discs, the patented Digipak is designed as the perfect replacement to the traditional plastic jewel box. Digipak is a self-contained package that protects the disc. It is shatter proof and allows for greater graphic display and market impact'.

Digipaks can be opened like a book, where one part opens to the right, one to the left and leaving the centre part holding the CD. The pack consists of 3 parts, front cover, middle section and the back cover. Many artists who publish their CD's into the public, will use a Digipak to help promote them, whether it be with exclusive pictures inside, or information about the artists themselves.

The front cover will display the Artists/Bands name. This will help consumers recognise that it is them and will help with promoting the CD. The Artists name is usually accompanied by a picture of the artist or a graphic design feature.

The Middle section is the part of the Digipak that encases the CD. This is generally plastic that is attached to the paper/card board, which is much like the more common 'Jewel Case'. Often, Digipaks display pictures of the artists and lyrics of their songs. If they decide to include this as 'bonus' features then they would also be found in the middle of the packs.

The back cover will generally display the artists or bands song. If its an album, it will display all of the songs on the CD. Also the barcode that shops scan for purchasing, will also be found on the back cover.

Day Three Of Filming

On the third day of filming , we decided that we would film some scenes in a forest. We found a perfect location at Thorndon country park and while the weather was foggy, we chose to go and film. We thought that it would be appropriate to film the scenes of the band playing. We felt it would be better to film in a forest than a stage so add some originality to our production. We wrote a list of all the shots that we were going to take so that we knew exactly what we were doing when we arrived. This helped us film within the time we had available and felt that this aided our productivity. 

Throughout the day, we thought of some extra shots, for example there was a fallen down tree and we decided to record James playing a guitar whilst sitting on it. This meant that we recorded more scenes to create a more effective production.
Below are some pictures from the day of filming:

Day Two Of Filming

Day One Of Filming

We needed it to be sunny and luckily we had a whole week of sun so we decided to go out and try and get some filming done. Our main objective for the day was to try and have fun whilst being filmed because our music video needed to be fun and entertaining. We set out with the camera but because we didn't storyboard well we wasn't completely sure what we were going to film so we struggled.

After a bit of a discussion we eventually decided we were going to try and film some shots at Hutton Country Park because we knew that during school times it was empty however because we came straight from school to film we did not really have appropriate clothing on so it looked a bit cheap and silly.

We decided as a group that we wanted the main character Tom to lip sync throughout the video as we believed it would look a lot more effective.

After watching the footage back that we recorded we felt that it was not really good enough to use so we sat down as a group and fully storyboarded our music video so when we come to day two of filming it will be exactly how we want it.

Below are some pictures from the day of filming:

Social Networking

We decided to use social networking to try to create a buzz about the music video before it was released. A twitter account means that we can quickly communicate to fans and gain a fan base. When one person follows the twitter account, all of their followers see this which means that there is a good chance that we can quickly gain a decent fan base. Because we can communicate to fans, they feel involved with the process and hopefully they will share the music video with other potential fans.

Facebook is a great way to get our music video and band noticed in the industry and to the general public. With advancements in technology, we are able to post updates on the move, to stay as much in contact with our fans. These advancements include apps on smart phones and on computers. If we not only use Twitter, but Facebook aswell, this will help us maximise band coverage and gain the biggest fan base we can. With advancements in Facebooks abilities, when a person 'likes' our page, it automatically lets their friends know that they have done this. Allowing more exposure to the general public.

Storyboarding

These are our initial storyboard concepts. We decided that if we storyboarded what we were going to film, when it actually came down to filming, we would have a clear structure and could stick by that. By having this sctructure it allows a more simple approach to filming.

Brief/Pitch

Moodboard of DigiPak Inspirations

Shooting Schedule

Inspirations and Influences

In planning our video, we obviously were influenced by certain artists and videos. Our video we filmed our main character having a good time with his friends, this would link in to our chosen genre of indie. Most indie songs and videos are about escaping and breaking out from the norm, so when we show him having fun in public, without having a care about people seeing. Before we did our video we watched videos during which we took obvious influence.

Example & Skream - Shot Yourself in the foot again

In this video we see the character out with friends having a good time, but leaving his partner at home. We took influence from this video as we both have a similar theme of having fun. However this video had a narrative by using cross cutting to the other scene. We didn't want to copy this video too much as we decided it wouldn't be deemed very original so we didn't have a similar narrative, but took inspiration from certain shots in this video.

Two Door Cinema Club - What You Know

We used a video from our chosen artist as we wanted to keep the same level of retro in our video, so we chose to based our chracters outfits on the ones in the video.

Textual Analysis - Paradise