DIGIPAK: Audience and Artist Feedback

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

Before moving on to creating alternate versions of the digipak cover, we asked people within our target audience of 15 - 30 year olds which they believed to be more suitable for the single after having heard the song. The majority of audience members stated that the second digipak cover would be better suited to the single as it gives us a clearer concept of the song's content. As Tyler Noel is an unsigned artist, it is to be expected that most people do not know who she is. Therefore, promoting her image is important as it is her image that people will recognise as she releases more music. Our issue with the pixelation of the picture was not mentioned by the audience; once we had pointed it out, our audience members said that is was unnoticeable.

ARTIST FEEDBACK

After asking representatives of our demographic for their preferences, we then approached the song's original artist - Tyler Noel - for her opinion. Not only did we send her the main two mock ups that were shown to our target audience, but an additional third cover which also features an image of the performer in the music video. She agreed with our target audience's opinion and stated that the second digipak cover would be the most suitable cover for her single's digipak.

DIGIPAK: Initial Ideas

 From our research on existing digipak covers, we noticed some trends which we bore in mind while we were creating our own. 

One of which was the simplistic approach: artists such as Beyoncé and Daft Punk used no images on the front cover of their albums Beyoncé and Discovery. The simplistic nature of these covers made the music the main focus without distracting the audiences with any extravagant aesthetics.

Another common convention with digipak covers is featuring the artist's image as the key focus of the cover. This is evident in Rihanna's cover for her album Talk That Talk as well as Chris Brown's cover for X. This is done as these artists' image are as famous as their music and can help with record sales as a means of promotion. Audiences can recognise the artist easily and are more willing to buy their albums as they trust that they will produce good music.

INITIAL IDEA #1

We based our first initial idea on the simplistic convention.This cover features only the name of the artist and the single as the quality of the song is all that is needed to persuade consumers to buy it. However, we were still able to convey the tone of the song through the image in case some people have not yet heard it. The image is bold and simple which replicates the message of the song. Tyler Noel's ultimatum is simple yet presents her as bold and strong enough to take charge of the relationship's future. The fact that her name is written in red supports this idea as this colour has connotations of both warning signs and passion - she is a loving woman but can also be powerful when she needs to be. 

INITIAL IDEA #2

Our second concept is based on the convention of album covers featuring the image of the artist. In a similar fashion to that of Rihanna's edgy expression on the cover of Talk That Talk or Trey Songz's soulful expression on the front of the Inevitable digipak, the image of the character of Noel has a facial expression that hints at the tone of the song. Her frustrated, hurt expression gives audiences an idea of what the song is about in case they have not heard it. The presence of  male figure in the background also gives the audience an idea of the song's topic; however, his back is to the camera so he is not the main focus and does not distract from the artist's image. We came across an issue when taking the photo as the strength of the sunlight made it difficult for us to see what we were taking a photo of. We attempted to fix the issue by covering the screen so the sun would not reflect off it as much but once we imported it onto the computer, we realised that the image was highly pixelated. This initially deterred us from using the image but after altering it on Photoshop, the image improved significantly and we felt it was usable.

MUSIC VIDEO: Final Cut

MUSIC VIDEO: Rough Cut

Raw footage No.1

This is one of the clips we recorded for the music video. This is raw footage so has not been touched at all.

This clip was going to be used to demonstrate the good times that the couple were having together before the male antagonists begins to behaviour in a manner than is not healthy to the relationship. He does this by answering the phone while they are together and it is one of the girls that likes him - his 'fan club'.

Pros:
This shot was able to show what we wanted it to show
- An overheard shot to show that the female protagonist was there and the natural feeling in the conversation with her natural movements and the male antagonist in the shot.
- The shot takes into consideration the rule of thirds, with the male protagonist in the left centre line as he is the main focus of the shot
- The performance of the artist was also good with him smiling a lot which was what we wanted

Cons
- The lighting of the shot was too dark which made it hard to see the male protagonist properly
- The female protagonists head could of been more in the shot but due restrictions of movement as location was next to a wall made it inaccessible to reach the desired position.

Audience feedback

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