Ancillary tasks (drafts)

As part of my digipak too, I have created a draft of the CD itself. I looked at Bruno Mars' original CD front cover for 'Doowops & Hooligans' and based my own on that, whilst also putting my own input into it.

The original CD as displayed above is very simple, it has a yellow silhouette of Bruno Mars' placed quite small on the bottom, and is black. There is the copyrights statement that goes around the edging of the CD in a very small black font.

After analysing the original, I decided that I too would like my CD to be simple. My CD consists of the BRUNO MARS title, the album titles and the producing logo. It also has the copyright statement around the bottom edging of the CD, similar to the Bruno Mars original CD. Instead of having my CD background a plain colour, I have decided to repeat the word "Bruno Mars" over and over, change the opacity and use it as a background. This element will also be used by others in the group. Using Adobe Photoshop to edit the background out, and superimpose the image, I wish to use the photograph below on the front to represent the artist.

Ancillary tasks (Album) (Photography)

As part of my digi-pak, I have also decided to create an album cover, CD booklet insert and CD to accompany my first ancillary task of a poster. 
Within the music video, there is a few seconds of filming that will be edited to appear as photobooth. Whilst on set filming this, images were also taken, which I believe could be appropriate for this ancillary task.

As in previous posts, I chose a few images and collaged them together. One image I particularly like is where the male actor is kissing the female on the cheek. Again, I chose to manipulate this image to play around with some effects.

The image has been changed, and a vintage effect has been placed on to alter the colouring slightly. It has also been letterboxed, which shows the photo booth effect or perhaps could illustrate that the image is old and kept, and been on a photo reel, allowing the photograph to have an ambiguous meaning. 

Ancillary tasks (Poster) (Photography)

Prior to the photo shoot I had organised for my ancillary tasks, I studied various images of Bruno Mars. I created a small collage using Photoshop to analyse some of the images, to grasp a concept for my own photographs.

Whilst analysing the photographs above, there were many aspects that drew my attention. The first is photographs which show Bruno Mars' from the waist upwards. These particular images attracted me because it doesn't show the entire body, but enough for the audience to become engaged with the artist, and perhaps even adopt the ideology of 'gaze theory', in that for males, they aspire to be as Bruno Mars is, or for females, to draw the attention of males who mirror Bruno Mars (clothes, hair, body etc). 

I also liked the different effects used in different photographs, for example some are in black and white, and others in full colour. There are also photographs with a small faded black fade around the outline, an effect which again I like.

The final part of my analysis of the Bruno Mars' images was the small fact that in each image, the artist was not necessarily looking directly in the camera, and in my own photo shoot, without copying the work shown above, I would like to mirror these concepts stated, adding my own personal touch to it.

19/02/12 - Day of Photo Shoot

My photo shoot went extremely well, here are a few of the images taken, in their original settings. Again, I have placed them in a collage to display a wide variety:

As you can see above, I have copied some of the poses that Bruno Mars uses, for example standing in front of a plain wall, behind a coloured background (blue and white shed) and added my own outdoor location. I personally feel that the photographs with the plain background are more effective as the focus is solely on the person in the image, which primarily is what attracts an audience upon their first viewing of a poster. 


Once I had analysed all of the photos taken (total of 60) I chose one particular image that I liked the best, and decided to manipulate it using various effects.

The image itself has not changed in this
photograph, however I have added a
background of mosaic tiles, and have
changed the opacity and degrees to which
the tiles are set, creating an almost
patchwork effect.

With this image, I mirrored the Bruno Mars
image in the collage above, using a black
fade around the corner, and changing the
colouring in the image from colour to black
and white.

Out of all of the photographs manipulated,
this is my favourite in that it is still a very
simple photograph, with a subtle touch of
editing. There has been a focal zoom on
the face of the actor, and the remaining
of the photo has been slightly blurred out.
I feel that the simple grey and white
colouring of the image will fit my poster
perfectly.

As the first image, I have added the mosaic
tiles effect, however altered the image and
decided to use a different one. I am not too
fond of this image as the colouring seems
very exaggerated, and the mise-en-scene
in the background does not fit the poster. 

Principle Photography

Below are some images that were taken for our principle photography from our first filming shoot, these are only snippets of some and more photo shoots are scheduled.

HALF TERM UPDATE & Valentines Day!

As today is Valentine's Day, there have been many romantic love songs (of many genres, predominantly romance/pop) played on TV channels, as well as the radio. One video that caught my attention was the "Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend" video, in which there are scenes from a photo booth. It acted as a filler, through sequences of music where there were no lyrics and during the chorus.

Here is a still image taken from the video:

 

On viewing this video, I gained some inspiration for our video, this I quickly shared with my group and a joint decision was made that this would be very appropriate for our music video.

The ideology is as follows:

Bruno Mars and the love interest, played by actors in the video, will enter a photo booth that will be a home made set, and will appear to be having their photos taken. As shown above, the actors will smile, perhaps laugh, kiss, pull faces etc. I feel that this will act as a filler in our video, as well as portraying the relationship of the two, which follows the narrative of the song itself.


UPDATE:

Over half term, there were various issues with the other groups about allocated times with the video camera and equipment, and due to the fact that our group received the equipment late, our filming was delayed. We overcame this problem however by compromising and moving our date to the Sunday, whereby a majority of our filming was complete, including the new idea that was proposed above.

Ancillary tasks (drafts)

My next ancillary task was a digipak, and just as I had created for my promotional poster, I too produced drafts for this.

The draft above is for the front and back cover of my CD case. Again, to reinforce continuity throughout, my group members along with myself will use the same font (Nueva Std) and colours (pale yellow, black and white).


The front of the CD case will include the artist logo that has been used consistently throughout my tasks, with the album name and artist name too. It will also include an image of some sort, be it of the artist itself or accompanied by others. 


The spine of the CD case I found was extremely important through research, and therefore was to be set out in a particular way. With the text facing towards the left when viewed, the spine will include again the artist name and album name, along with numbers and letters on each end, acting as sort codes as such.


The back of the CD case is again important as it is what will draw the target audience into purchasing the product. The back will include the song listing, a few images, perhaps displayed as polaroid images, with contact details (website). It will also incorporate the producing label (Virgin Records) and a barcode. A feature I may include on the back of the case is a star rating, and also a small quote.

Ancillary tasks (drafts)

Before producing my ancillary tasks using the Adobe software, I created several drafts to analyse which features I would like to incorporate.


My first ancillary task is a poster promoting the new Bruno Mars album.


Whilst working along side my group members to ensure that across the entirety of our tasks, there would be continuity, for example the same fonts, colours and perhaps imagery too, I created the draft below.

The draft above is annotated to show the fonts,
colours, and layout of my poster.

For my promotional poster, I had envisioned it would appear to be a poster within a poster. Once I had studied conventions of other promotional posters, it became apparent that there were certain aspects to include, for example:

• The album title
• Imagery of the artist
• Artist logo
• Contact information e.g. website, Blackberry barcode/Twitter logo/Facebook logo

The above have been included in my poster, which I have already begun to produce using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
I used this image, that I have previously used in a different post as my cover image of the artist.

I have chosen to use this image because the way that I have edited it I feel creates a very quirky look, which matches the persona of Bruno Mars completely. To reinforce the feel of a 'poster within a poster' I will use small pieces of what appears to be masking tape on the corners of the  image, to portray the fact it has been stuck on.

Ancillary tasks update!

My ancillary tasks, I must admit, took a slow starting, mainly due to the fact that my time was not spread evenly. This however has been amend and my previous research has begun once again. As one of my tasks I wish to produce a magazine poster, and through my research I found that Bruno Mars hasn't released one, or not on the Internet at least. I did manage to find a tour poster instead, which provided a basis of the codes and conventions that occur on music promotional posters. 

A quick denotation of the poster illustrates that Bruno Mars' poster uses the same colouring and effects, font and image (rocket in the background) as the the album cover which is shown in a previous post, displaying continuity throughout his promotional package; a feature which I too will include. The poster also includes dates and locations to which the tour is set, ticket prices etc, which will not be included in my magazine poster as it will not be portraying his tour; instead it will be his new song/album. An aspect that I will incorporate however is the use of the logos in the bottom right hand corner, displaying Bruno Mars' companies in which he works. I believe this is an excellent feature to have, be it a simple few or many as displayed above, as it establishes the artist.