I’m a part of a great tragedy led by my fellow team mates. My Team member Maria took expected grade, Got an A* in Media Studies thus left the team with incomplete tasks, and then Leena my other team member did not complete the Final Music video at given time, lost all the data for the video due to file corruption and Dropped the subject during October without informing (When My CAIEs Started).

Its quite unexpected and unprofessional on behalf of my Friends/ Team for leaving me alone with nothing but a poor impression, regardless of that i have pulled up on whatever i can to present my blog alone. Thankyou.

Q.1 How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do the represent social groups or issues?

The genre me and my team picked for our final products was: Folk Pop, a genre in general that somewhat breaks tones of conventions and creates new ones mostly due to the freedom allotted to the artists. Rather than having set conventions the contemporary scene works in trends which emerge with time, which is what we’ve based certain aspects of our products off and what we’ve gone against to showcase some of our own artistic ability. In a country like Pakistan, which is mostly over run with remastered coke studio versions of old songs, releasing an Folk pop album and music video is conventional as it is. Similarly, due to the creative freedom the genre allowed us, to represent social issues which we may not have been able to if we were to be policed by commercialism. Keeping up with the conventions, our music video is Conceptual narrative and performance based ( a mix of three) with bright lighting at some areas and dim in other, features the concept of Longing for love. Furthermore, we used Match on action and jump cuts often to match the tempo and catchy beat of the song to create a smooth effect. Also, our music video featured conventional outfits to match the theme of the track.

Website

For the Website, we mostly kept to the conventions and opted to use a multiple page website for. This allows audiences quicker and easier access and they can view all the content by having header which shows tabs on go. Additionally, in the header, we added navigation links along with the logo and band name of the left to immediately catch the audience’s attention. Also, we embedded our music video and digipak onto the page and used the artist’s repeatedly throughout the website so that audiences would immediately recognize him from the music video and digipak and hence would feel a sense of familiarity and personal connection with the band.

Digipak

For our Digipak front cover, we followed conventions by including a tri-coloured borders overall. Additionally, we had set a specific colour palette and had stuck to it for a more professionally finish. The front cover, CD, and the back cover included the logo, Artist name and album name for the sake of branding and to make our audience familiar through repetition. Furthermore, the back cover included the copyright details at the bottom alongside the bar-code so that it could easily be scanned for purchase while keeping with production house formalities. Also our Inlay also included the logo to familiarize audiences with our icons.

Q2. How do the element of your production work together to create a sense of branding?

A successful brand can create and sustain a strong, positive, and lasting impression in the mind of a consumer. Brands provide external cues to taste, design, performance, quality, value and prestige if they are developed and managed properly and can convey positive or negative messages about a product, along with indicating the company or service to the consumer bring a direct result of past advertising, promotion, and product reputation.

In order for to create our artist identity and star image, we started out by making the Artist logo which would be featured on not only the website and digipak but also on further merchandise which would familiarize the audience with the band and create an association or image in their minds that would immediately remind them of the our Logo ‘ZA’ whenever and wherever they would see the logo.

Q3. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as real media text?

To get an idea of what our audiences wanted and their expectations, we conducted a survey that we made on Google Docs. By including targeted questions like, “What would you like the music video to be influenced by” and ‘ What style of music video do you like?’, we could better engage our audiences/target market i.e, young adults. While reviewing the results of the survey, we decide to incorporate certain aspects into our final products while choosing to ignore others e.g., in ‘ What style of music video do you like?’ our the majority of our audience voted for Vintage we decided to stick with the conventions of Folk Fusion M/V and opted for A Mixture of three based music video, as we believed that it would appeal best if we highlighted every aspect individually.

How My Products Would Be Distributed

The survey we conducted also questioned our target market on how they discover new music and consume music. The results showed YouTube and Online as the most preferred answers, respectively, leading us to believe that we should primarily focus on online distribution. The music video would be put up on YouTube and Vimeo along with official audios of each track, The album would also be put up on online streaming services like Deezer and Patari, the latter a particularly popular choice in Pakistan. For digital purchase, the album would be available on the artist’s website along with Bandcamp, a platform for indie artists in particular. The latter also allows artists to ship physical copies of the album, also available on the shop on the artist’s website. Physical copies of the album will also be provided to music stores in Pakistan such as ‘Radio City’.

Q.4 How did you integrate technologies- software, hardware and online tools- in this project?

We used Photoshop for multiple purposes throughout the project. It was used to design the logo for the artist, the record label and the production house. We used it once more to create the Merch that was later be featured on the website and finally for designing the entirety of our digipak. Another software that was excessively used was Adobe Premiere Pro used to edit our music video from start to end. The Snipping Tool was also used to capture our progress through snips and Microsoft Word was used for writing out our synopses. We Used Google Docs for Surveys and many Slide making apps to create presentations. We also used iMovie to edit and make the behind the scenes of our shoot.

For the shoot itself we used a Canon 70D Camera and an assortment of accessories such as SD cards, chargers and data cables to handle and transfer data. I used my own personal laptop and the computers provided by our School’s Media and IT Lab. The Natural Daylight complimented and as well as Ring Lights and Reflectors to adjust warmth.

An assortment of online tools were used throughout the project, the most prominent being the WiFi provided by our school. We used Emaze and Other online sites to create presentations of music video theories, music video analyses and star image. I also Used Excel for the shot list for our project. I chose WordPress again as the platform to create my blog, where I recorded all my progress. Using Google Docs for survey to gauge the preferences of our target audience. Google was used to research and Applications like Whatsapp were used to communicate between the team mates. Social Media networks such as, YouTube and Facebook were used to make profiles for the artist. Mobirise was used to construct our promotional website.

The first DigiPak album I’m going to discuss is by Maroon 5 “Red Pill Blues”. The cover depicts all seven members of Maroon 5 pictured on polaroid photographs in different SnapChat camera filters as because these filters are really common these days used by anyone of any age. So basically this albums audience is everyone. On the top left we can see the Logo of the Band written in San Serif  to keep it old school and In the Bottom Right we can see the Name of the Album “Red Pill Blues” wrote in the same colour as the albums name. The overview of the Album cover is pretty basic with a white background.

The Back Cover of the Album is plain too as only the tracklist has been written with their their theme colour “Red, White, Blue and Black:” and plain white background which is quite more unique and different as we see most of the music albums with artist close ups. and in the bottom right we see a barcode and on the left side we can see the credits of the album.

The CD is again following the black and white theme colour with a triangle in between and Bands name in the bottom.

Lastly I’ll be discussing The Chainsmokers ‘Sick Boy’ on the front cover we see a girl in standing in a full shot and there is red smoke coming out of her hands, the theme is black, red, white and maroon. We can see the album name in the top middle of the cover in between the smoke and under it we can see the Bands name the font is San Serif more of medieval .This album gives more of dark vibe because of the muted colours and the red smoke In the back cover we can see the main the tracklist in the same font as of album name and the same girl in full shot but a little more zoomed in. In this album the barcode is placed on top left with all the sponsor logos who collaborated next to it. The inlay CD is plain black with albums name below and Band’s name on top of it with the same font used in the front and back cover.

Halseys’s ‘Hopeless Fountain Kingdom’ this digipak cover has more of a scrapbook feel to it, with tape, cut-outs of checkered paper and palm trees, and scorch marks on it, to name but a few elements of the artwork. Halsey is stood in an almost full-length shot, in front of a man who she seems to be holding onto, although the nature of the cover makes this an uncertain judgement. The font here differs from the first digipak, The font used is more Gothic/medieval feel to it. The predominant theme behind this album itself (which is addressed in the first track on the album, “The Prologue”) is that of the famous Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, meaning that this font choice does make sense, along with the image of the two, as they appear to be from differing gangs looking at their clothes, but when mixed with the palm trees, there is also the influence of the Baz Lurhmann adaptation from 1996.

The theme colour of this album is bright mostly used reds, blues and yellows.The tracklist continues with this scrapbook-ish theme, featuring more of the checkered paper, along with a filtered-looking blue sky, suggesting again the retro link to the album and themes brought up in it.The font used on the tracklisting is the same as the artist font, but the title does make another appearance on this page, even though it is slightly obscured by the tracklisting.

Digipak is a style of packaging special editions of CD albums. These packaging are less resistant than jewel cases as they tend to break easily, so it tends to show signs of wear relatively quickly. It is made out of heavy cardboard paper material and constitutes of visual graphics/elements related to the album and the artist as they engage with the audience. 

Every digipak is uniquely constructed to that represents the band and the genre they are representing and while they may vary from each other visually, there are some codes and conventions most of them share that came to my notice:

​Front Cover. This may includepicture of artist/band or any graphic element that are related to the concept of the album, the name of album, logo/name of Artist, details of any bonus material.

Back Cover: Usually contains the track listing, producer information, respective copyrights, Bar-code.

Inlay: may contain images of artist/band or a continuation of their concept, and additional text alongside the CD.

16th Feb 20   (Re-shooting Artist )

After finally shooting our actress, we wanted to give our Artist recordings another shot since last time we had major flaws as it was our first time recording. Anyhow as i mentioned earlier, I wasn’t available this weekend so Maria and leena picked up the artist and went straight to the location as they had planned and had straightened out what they were supposed to do this time and they had already gotten the permission letter signed beforehand so they dont get into another hassle.

Anyways moving on, the shots were recorded using the list and this time the artist actually tried his best to lip sync with the song which really helped. Maria Took my position and helped Leena with Art directions as well as being a director. On the other hand leena did a great job taking orders and giving the shot what maria wanted. I was glad i had a hardworking team who wanted to put in all their efforts for a great outcome that we wanted to produce.

I truly i felt that the last day of shooting wasn’t as hectic as the other days maybe because we had done this part before it was easier for my team to manage direct and produce clips that we needed. Overall as we used same equipment and shot list over and over again we had developed skills that we did utilize.

I will be attaching BTS and adding  information taken from Maria’s and Leena’s perspectives as i wasn’t on the set. 

Our day for shoot is just around the corner and we are so excited as this is actually the final product that would be judged and graded, Me maria and leena also discussed where to gather at what time and what belongings we were supposed to bring for our first shoot. As we all have a Whatsapp group named Rabbits( our team), we share and discuss everything on it. Tn this screenshot of our chat below is shown how leena’s sending images of the props.

Here is a cute little image Leena created for our budget list

Anyways the budget is divided carefully and calculated evenly all over mostly we all had different props and equipment at home, I had basic camera necessities, where as Leena had all the artistic antique decorations and maria had the clothes and the wooden box. The snacks costed us more as we are supposed to wakeup at 7 rush with our items gather at one friends house and leave together so we all preferred eating out as well as buy water bottles. Moreover Old lahore is extremely far from our homes and as we have a schedule of 4 days it surely takes alot of petrol, further more a book including lock and keys were bought by maria.

We will be using Adobe Photoshop as we’re quite familiar with its usage also since, we need to make the digipak for the music promotion package and edit the photo shoot . For video editing, we’ll be using Adobe Premiere Pro and since our video requires graphics and scribbling, we’ll use Adobe After Effects and maybe  Vegas Pro 

Camera Body Used: – For the main shoot of the music video we will be using my Canon EOS 750D and leenas Canon EOS 70D and for the Behind The Scenes footage we will be using Maria’s Iphone X mainly as well as our own phones.

Lens: For Camera Lens we will be using a Canon Kit lens 18-55mm , a Canon Zoom Lens EF-S 18-135mm and a 50mm for  portrait photo shoot for the album.

other than that a reflector, a ring light  and an extension wire.