Olly Murs - In Case You Didn't Know

Front

 The front cover of the digipak is similar to the Dizzee Rascal album, in that they both have very simple and basic themes which are easy to read and yet still attractive to the eye. This cover has Olly centered and directly looking at the camera, this attracts the audiences attention due to the eye  contact. The colours are very bright, which may resemble his style of music which is pop and usually vibrant in tone. The more colours used here could have been done so that it attracts more of the target audience, this is often middle aged children, teenagers and many adults. The bright colours will certainly attract the teenagers as it would be easily recognisable in a music store. The font used portrays a playful and simple style, although it doesn't seem to exert importance as some more smooth, bold fonts it still dominates the front cover of the digipak.

Back

 The back cover of the digipak connotes the same theme seen on the front. As the actual photo is the same as the front, however Olly isn't present and instead the track list is centered in-front of the white wall where he was for the front cover. The house style has been kept with the same font which is used for the album title on the front and the track list. Again the back panel of the digipak includes a bar code and the record company's name, for this album it is SYCO Music, SONY MUSIC and EPIC.

Inside

The left hand panel of the inside of the digipak there is a list of Olly's tour dates, the title of the panel uses the same font as does the album title and track list texts. This helps follow the basic style of the album and still adds colour to what is a simple page, as the background is white and the tour dates in a clear, black font. The CD however, is completely different to the digipak itself. The CD evokes a much more formal style compared to the rest of the digipak, this may have been done so that Olly's image is still professional and so that he is taken seriously, due to the rest of the digipak promoting a playful style.

Making The Signs

During the planning stages for our music video we wanted to have our character (Glenn) holding signs during a rather long instrumental part of the song. The signs will have the words What A Life ? on them so that the song is promoted visually as well as during the lyrics, I volunteered to create these signs for the video as I had many paints and spare wood in the shed at home.

I began by opening a word document and typing out each word in a font called 'Stencil' which ironically was perfect for creating a stencil type font. I made each word large enough so that it would be easily read from a distance when filming and printed them out. Once I had each part of the question 'What A Life?' I began to cut the letters out with a Stanley knife so that I could spray over the stencil onto the boards of wood.


Below are the finished boards which Glenn will be using during the video. I took them to school the next day and the group and I were very pleased with the outcome, therefore making them a success!

Dizzee Rascal - Showtime

In order to try and understand the concept behind creating a digipak for an artist I began by looking through my collection of music albums. I wanted to see how in this case Dizzee Rascal's album keeps a house style and connotes his type of music genre, which is a blend of rap and pop. 

Front

 Here is the front cover for the album Showtime, this was released in 2004 and is seen as the album which kick started his career. The cover is simple, yet effective as the dark background and vibrant colours contrast with each other, this essentially makes the album clear to the audience when it is on the shelf at music stores amongst many other albums. The font used for his name and album title connote an idea of a west-end show, or the typical style of neon signs in Las Vegas on nightclubs and casinos. This style matches the title Showtime as many neon signs advertise shows and this style of font is a classic yet modern theme in recent music albums and videos. The matching colours of red and yellow also creates a more professional image as they do not clash, yet they carefully make the cover bold enough to be noticed. The clothing worn by Dizzee Rascal connotes his style of music, as the baseball jacket and loose jeans are often associated with the rap genre. The red sleeves of the jacket also follow the colour theme used for his album cover. 

Back

The back of the album is again relatively simple in design, but has the colours to make it stand out easily. Another neon style font has been used for the track list which is simple to read, and large enough to make the back cover bold and attractive. Typical digipak conventions are seen on the back cover, these being a bar code and the record label's name. In this case the record company is XL RECORDINGS LTD and is seen beneath the bar code; which is needed for all album covers as it allows the shop selling it to scan the item and therefore let the record company know how many have been sold. 

Inside

This is the inside of the digipak for Showtime. This follows the theme used on the front and back covers as it is very simple, with a dark background and the red and yellow font. The CD imitates the front cover so that when the user is playing the CD they can easily tell which digipak it belongs to. The left panel shows the copyright legislation of the digipak, along with a personal message from Dizzee Rascal to his mother, fans and artists he collaborated with to make the album, part of it reads "First up I wanna thank god for makin this possible and also my mum for being so strong through a lot of bullshit I love you". The font used here seems to be a standard font as it is legal content, and needs to be clear to read so no copyright is committed. The right hand side of the left panel is part of a photo of Dizzee Rascal, it is shot from inside a broken window, which may represent his broken past. 

First Filming With Glenn

We traveled to London on the 19th of January with our new character Glenn to begin filming for our music video. We could only leave to film at 2pm so our time was limited whilst in the city, this meant we could only get a selection of shots completed on this day. However we recorded Glen in several locations performing the whole song, this means that when we begin to edit the song we can select certain parts of the song to fit our plan.

Jay

This was the first location of shooting, it was by London Bridge Rail Station and the idea was for Glen to sing the song whilst looking out over the River Thames. This image shows Jay filming this shot, which required using the tripod to keep the camera steady.

Me

This image shows me filming Glen walking over Tower Bridge, this shot wasn't actually planned but as we was walking over it we thought it could prove to be an effective tracking shot. For this shot I held the camera and we had Glen walking towards me, I had to have a steady paced walk for filming this shot as we didn't want the shot to be moving vigorously.

Matt

Here is Matt filming Glen playing the guitar and singing the song, this tunnel will be used through-out our video so making sure these shots were shot well is vital. This image is showing where in our video we want a slow movement from Glen's feet to his upper body. We also used the tripod to film this shot which came out more effective than filming it free hand, as the movement was much smoother.


We also wanted to share the responsibility of filming so that the workload was evenly split and so we all were comfortable using the camera. We all wanted to be able to use the camera so that in case anyone couldn't attend filming days we had a back up camera operator.

First Day Of Filming With Jack

On the Sunday of January the 15th myself and Matt travelled to London to film the London Eye and Jack doing his performance shots. During the train journey Jack phoned Jay to let him know he couldn't perform in our music video, once Jay let Matt and I know of the situation we all thought the video would be a huge doubt.

The day progressed and we went to the London Eye as we had no character to film, however once we arrived at the Eye it was closed! This day was planning out to be a disaster, as we had no character to film, and no London Eye. The events of the day casted doubt over the group and I as our whole video was in jeopardy, however our luck soon turned whilst traveling home.

During the journey home, Matt asked his friend Glenn Rice if he would be interested in being the main character in our video. Luckily for us he said yes, this helped our group greatly as Glenn is part of a band (called Go-Zilla) and therefore is a natural musician. He also makes his own music videos for his band so his knowledge for certain shots and camera angles will provide us with great help.

Glenn Playing The Guitar 

Here is a photo of Glenn playing his guitar for his band, he can also play the drums which adds to his musical ability. With Glenn having a strong musical ability it will work as our advantage as he also knows how to lip sync to the lyrics, this will make our video look more professional and original. 

Equipment We Need To Use

In order to actually film our music video we need to use a Sony Handycam. This is small enough to be easily carried around London and still has enough quality to record a high standard of footage. We will also store our footage on a recording tape, and then upload it to the computer from there. Using a tape is useful as we can simply rewind it and film over any shots we do not need or want.  

In order to film some shots without any jerky camera movements, we need to attach the camera to a tripod. The tripod allows the user to film shots which have no movement from human error, at different heights due to the retractable legs and have slow pans and vertical movement as the base of the attachment can move up and down and from side to side. Using a tripod in our group will certainly make our filming easier as we have many planned pans across the River Thames and long length shots of the London Eye and a busy road in Westminster.

The group and I will also need to use a music player of some sort. This is so Glenn can hear the music whilst lip syncing the correct lyrics at the right times. Matt suggested downloading the track 'What A Life' to his iPhone so that Glenn can simply have the music playing in his jacket pocket. This will aid Glenn in when to come into a certain lyric and how long to hold it for.  Our phones will obviously be useful when planning to film our video as we can call or text each other to arrange times and places to meet. 

We took still photos of each other whilst filming with my digital camera so we can show them on our blogs. This will also help show our stages of production as we can take photos of each stage as we continue with our filming of the music video.

Final Animatic

Here is the final animatic for our music video, the process of creating this video has given the group and I an insight to how to make the actual music video. This is because we had to edit the shots to the music and add effects in such as fades, the time it took to create the animatic has also given us an idea to how long the actual video will take, as editing film will be far more complex than editing still image.

We shall use this animatic to hopefully give us a clear guide to what shots we need to film for the video itself, and hopefully using this will save us time when actually filming the video.

Filming Schedule

Click Image To Enlarge

Risk Assessment

Before going to London to start filming the music video the group and I had to carry out a risk assessment for the day of shooting.