Websites Inspirations

ED SHEERAN

This is the home page from the Ed Sheeran website.

This is an image made up of varies different parts of the Ed Sheeran website. 

 The first website i looked at in order to give us inspiration was Ed's, i chose this particular artist as he is the same genre and style as our artist. Ed Sheeran portrays the same image that we are trying to sell so i thought it would be a good place to start.

The website as a whole is quite plain, however it is effective, the plain white background has a drawing placed in the background. The colour scheme is black and white with tiny aspects of orange when you load links and little details like that. The website includes various different pages with information and images relating to Ed. Theme is linked throughout the whole website, the colour scheme and text stay the same through out. There are links to all his social networks and the site is interesting and productive in order to allow the audience to connect with Ed and feel apart of his career.

OLLY MURS

This is the home page from Olly Murs' website. 

These are varies screen captures from all over Olly's website.

I looked at Olly Mur's website as he is a well known artist, and he is similar to Simon in some ways. The website has a white background with added effect over the top, again the website follows the same theme through out, the colour scheme and text link and work well together. This particular website uses colour however it is only a small amount, the website is not block colour, it is plain with a small sections of colour to draw the audience's eye. On this website there is a distinctive banner along the top, this gives the viewer something interesting to look at, it also identifies Olly as a artist.  

Looking At Past Work - WHAT GRADE?

In order to understand what i need to do and how to do it well, i looked at previous work from past students. This is one of the campaigns that i looked at, i analysed the music video and the digi pack.

The video uses good lighting, the lighting effects creates a dramatic atmosphere and makes the video look more interesting. The girl in dressed quite sexually, she is made to look quite confident and powerful however they way she sings and moves contradicts this. The idea behind the video is good and it shows that the group have planned, however the the visuals sometimes don't match up to the music, the song is upbeat at some points however the artist doesn't change. As a whole i think the music video is creative however due to the bad acting and unconfident performance it makes the video quite boring to watch after a while. This is something i will take into consideration when creating our video as we do not want our audience to be bored.

The digi pack looks eye-catching and works well, the colour scheme is appropriate and portrays the girl as being confident. The way she is dressed and posed insinuates that she is confident and sexually attractive, the amount of flesh that is on show is provocative and portrays a particular character. Having the digi pack in this way shows the artists image in many different formats, the different photos of her, although they are different, portray the same image.




As a whole the same image is portrayed through out the digi pack and the music video, although the same image is shown in the music video the image has hard to believe as the actor was not confident and a little camera shy. As a whole i would give this a level three as whole campaign is linked and works well together, from looking at the video and digi pack you can see that a lot of planning has gone into the making of these. The editing of both the music video and the digi pack is good, you can see that a lot of time has gone into the making of both pieces.

Doing this task has allowed me to see what i need to do in order to create a interesting digi pack, this task has allowed me to look into different past works and see what grade they are, this will help me figure out what i need to do, in order to get a level 4.


The Breakdown;

Concept / image 

The video has basic visual and lyric links, the concept is there and shoes a basic understanding however there is not great detail.       3/5

MES 

Costume, colour, lighting, make-up, location and performance.

Different locations doesn't use one place. lighting effects and back lighting used well. Acting is very poor, director not gave actor much to do, no movement nothing interesting happens to the actor, bland. Costume changes, make up fits well with concept.     4/5

Camera 

Not interesting, varied shots. lip syncing could of been improved. Very set up, however varied shots. 

4/5

Animatic

This is our animatic, in order to create this we drew pictures of how we wanted each shot to look. This was a long process as we had to match up the timings of the song to the shots. We created this animatic in order to see how the music video would look, marched up to the music we can see if the visuals match up to the music, doing this has also showed us that our video needs to be timed and matched up accurately.

Digipack & Website Analysis

In order for me to choose a artist that would be beneficial for me to analyse I intended to search for a artist with a recent image transformation, therefore, after a vast amount of research put into a variety of artists, I decided to analyse Selena Gomez along with her new album; "Stars Dance". 

The reason why I have chosen to analyse Selens Gomez as a campaign case study is because recently, she has transformed into a new image & mature, adult persona in contrast to her Disney star days of cheesy pop. Moreover, Selena Gomez has been known as a innocent child star that has been linked to a romance with teen hearthrob; Justin Bieber, therefore, Selenas image has been very child-friendly over the years, however, after her break-up from Bieber, her withdrawal from Disney related productions, Gomez has constructed a sophisticated and sultry image to her physical appearance, as well as her music, which has proved a huge success within the UK especially this year. 

Moreover, Selena Gomez's "Stars Dance" album cover constructs a sultry theme of French Noir with dusky blends of black & grey tones to result in a old school Hollywood Glamour image to reinforce Selena's transition from a vibrant coloured, bubbly child star to a more serious approach of sultry & classy sexiness to her image. Furthermore, the headpiece Gomez wears on the cover could have a intertexuality reference to the Great Gatsby due it's 1920s vintage jewels which could also justify my point of Gonez trying to portray a Hollywood Glamour image. However, the font used on the image cover still determines that Selena is of a adolescent age due to the drastic change of color from gray, mysterious tones to a vibrant pink colour which portrays a sense of girly, innocent nature. However, the way the font that spells "Selena Gomez" has a font style that it begins sharp and bold from the top of the letters, then fades into the sultry gray tones of the album cover. This could portray a symbolic transistion from Selena as a girl into a woman. 

When analysing Selena Gomez website, from the analysis of the album cover, I was expecting the website to be a backdrop of black with tones of silver, gold & possibly pink to reinforce that sultry, Hollwood glamour image that I perceive her to have, however, although Gonez has aspects of her new material/image, she still hasn't fully transformed into the adult image that is performed within her recent music videos & album/promotional artwork. For example, the back drop was white, which I feel portrays a sense of innocence, however there was advertisements taking up most of the page for her new material which showed the audience of her sophisticated new look. Therefore I feel that Gomez is creating a image as slowly as possible so that she can slowly bring her fans into her new images step by step, without causing a drastic change & causing a loss in her fanbase, therefore she creates a relationship with her audience.

However, the image that she is perceiving for her new material definitely falls under the theme of sophisticated glamour with a show girl vibe, however she evens out her new image & old image through this promotional advertisement for her new tour as it doesn't follow the exact same look as her album cover, but has the same themes of dusky tones, Hollywood luxury essence & a major Star-in-Text image without totally cancelling out her old image of innocence.

Overall Gomez has slowly created a image of growing maturity as we can see in the image above that she has published on her website, however, she's done it in a way that her fanbase has grown up with her, therefore not losing a drastic amount of fans due to her previous image. Moreover, overall, I feel Selena Gomez has created a image with subjects that have proven to be successful in 2013, such as the Great Gatsby, Hollwood Glamour, vintage tones, etc to converge into a image that she knows will be successful a successful image to present without causing a rebelling offence to her older fans. 

My Album cover remake : Leona Lewis

Conclusion:

This is Leona Lewis's album 'Spirit' that I chose to recreate for my A2 media project task. I chose to recreate this particular album as I felt that it was a simple cover that involved a skilful input of colour coordination to achieve the same tone as Leona Lewis's album. Additionally,  as the album is mainly focused on the artist herself, therefore more focus is put into the editing of one subject in the frame therefore making it a memorable & recognisable cover. 

My album cover involved me by firstly take a close up shot of myself on my iPhone to create a Star-in-Text image for the album cover. Next, I then inserted the photo within photoshop and cut the background off around me & smoothed the outline of my face in the frame so that it later blends with the opaque background later. Moreover , I then used the tools that Photoshop assisted for me by creating a new black background for the album cover, insert a font identical to the one used in Lewis's original album cover, making sure that the text is central to the frame, & using similar colour tones to the font. 

Furthermore, the most challenging part that I found was re-creating the tint, temperature & tone to the colour correction of the album cover, however after a high use of temperature & contrast, along with other colour correction editing skills, I finally achieved a similar looking Leona Lewis album cover. 

My Transition:

conceptual mind map/moodboard

After listening to Simon Stirling-Stand Close, I constructed a mind map of all of my initial thoughts/ideas that we could interpret within our music video. I made sure I covered ideas based on lighting, location, shot types, themes & narrative. I feel these were the most important subjects to decide on as the rest of our ideas will follow and develop from these particular ones. 

Additionally, to obtain a visual idea based on subjects such as cinematography, lighting, themes, narrative situations, locations, colours, etc, I created a mood board full of pictures that I feel could have some sort of relation to our music video in the future. For example, the zoomed shot of the individual playing the guitar is to represent the camera focus that we will be intense focus on Simon's guitar to create focus not just only on the visual styling of the video, but also on the acoustic sound that links with the visuals in the music video.

Website and Album analysis- Danny

After extensive research i decided to analyse Miley Cyrus as an artist and her new album 'Bangerz', The reason why i chose Miley Cyrus was because this album bought with it a complete image transformation. Miley was originally a star of Disney Channels 'Hannah Montana'  where she had a girl next door image surrounding her, she was cute, wore minimal make up and dressed appropriately, but when deciding to leave Disney Channel she attempted to break out in a solo music career but it didn't take off too well, this year 2013, saw Miley Cyrus like we have never seen her before.

To the left you will see Miley Cyrus' website, it is quite minimalistic and hasn't got many pages at all, the colors are quite feminine which might give an idea too her target market, i believe her market is adolescent teen girls between ages of 16-18, she is dressed quite provocatively with a seductive look, this may appeal to the female market as they aspire to look like her and have her slim, curvaceous figure. Her website consists of links to social networks which also brands the younger market, there are links to Facebook, Twitter and Youtube and then finally links to buy her album, with the label 'BUY! BUY! BUY!' most artists try to hide the fact they want the fans money but Miley is taking a different approach and seems to be a level of honesty with her fans that in fact she does want their money.

 To the left again is her youtube page, full of previews of her album 'Bangerz' with directors cuts and shoot filming, this gives the fans an insight into what she does and this creates a good relationship with the people who ultimately will give her money.

To the right is her new album 'Bangerz' album cover, it shows and carries the same theme form her website with her dressed provocatively but not showing too much which leave some to the imagination, this could appeal to men also as they would find her attractive and want to know more or hear her music. The colours used match well and her face is the most noticeable thing on the cover which lets people know she is the star and gives her a level of importance.

 To the left are images that she has chosen to put on her website, they are very provocative and very different to her image before, i feel personally she has gone to the extreme and created a sexual punk look to get as far away form her good girl next door image that Disney portrayed.

This Image is one i found on the internet it shows her transformation form the girl next door image to the punk, rock star image that she is portraying herself to be at this current time. Below is her as Disney's' Hannah Montana, as you can see it is completely different form he image now which backs up my theory that she wanted to get as far away form that image as possible so when to the lengthy extremes of transforming her image completely, other artists like Noel Gallagher have also tried to get away form images from former music carrers.