Primary Analyse of Bon Iver Digipak + Research

 

Review of Album : http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?p=91047361

Analysis of The Killers' Sam's Town CD Case-Jewel Case




Outside of CD Case

 
 This compact disk case I am analysing is the Killers' album, Sam's Town, which has been produced by Flood and Alan Moulder with the Killers. The co-producer Flood appears in the Album's booklet, dressed as an American Native.


The front of the digipak displays what the album features and star ratings from magazines such as The Guardian, Q and Mojo. This would show the purchaser of the album it is worth buying.

The monochrome colour scheme of the album sets the tone of the indie-rock band.

The typeface used for the albums title is of the archive roundhand script. The title of the album was taken from Sam's Town Hotel and Gambling Hall, a hotel-casino in Las Vegas, the hometown of the band. 

Visually the album is targeting primarily males, due to the black and red colour scheme and the use of the female model in a bikini (Felice Lazae). The model and the ram frame the shot of the image, they also show the band's American background (due to her 'Miss' sash). 

The back of the album has the image of all the band together. This wide shot reveals their body language which is quite cool and relaxed, this relates to their music which is in the sub-genre of indie-rock.
This style has the characteristics of the do-it yourself attitude, this is portrayed by the impression they express to their audience; the band have their co-producer make an appearance in their album booklet as a model. 



The album was themed very much around America and the band's background; "Hot Fuss was all based on fantasy. The English influences the make up, they were what I imagined rock was. I'm a dreamer, you know? So I dug into that dream and made Hot Fuss. But hearing people call us the best British band from America made me wonder about my family and who i really was. That's what Sam's Town is really about.

Sam's Town wasn't some love letter to America or overreaching mythic thing. It was about me. I sang about my Grandma Dixie and my brother being born on the 4th of July and guess what? My Grandma's name is Dixie and my brother was born on the 4th of July 1969.  " Brandon Flowers in 2009, reflecting on the negative reviews the album received. His quote portrays how Sam's Town was just written about the band's hometown and life. The photography of the album which was done by Anton Corbijn also relates to American and Las Vegas by the location and subjects chosen.  

Inside Album with Advert & CD

The ram is a symbolism for leadership, power, force, authority and sacrifice. The ram head is also sacred in witchcraft and Satanism. Relating to songs within the album, When We Were Young: " They say the devil's water, it ain't so sweet", Bling (Confession of a King) "So I ran with the devil", The River Is Wild "Because that bitch, Keeps trying to make him pray". This evidence within their lyrics suggests their are hints of Satanism within their music.
However Brandon Flowers is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints suggests the reason for the appearence of the ram to be otherwise; that Flowers does have the belief of the devil and yet worships Jesus Christ and God, hence the mention within song lyrics. Such as within When We Were Young "He doesn't look a thing like Jesus" and My List "And your prayers they’re not fables " have biblical content. So therefore enforce the band as powerful and authoritive for their auidence to admire and create a loyal fanbase.

Using the advert to give the buyer the choice to use the artist's music on other media types (mobile phones), this new media use within their album shows the band are modern and up to date on technologies and knowledge.



Inside Album without Advert or CD



Inside the case the same image used upon the CD of the rams head is then duplicated within the case itself. The techniqual reason for this is that it gives the consumers the recognisable relation from CD to case and therefore for them to know where to place the CD easily.

Plan to improve Blog.

• Analyise complete promotional package - One artists magazine advert of an album or single, the digi-pack for that single or album and the music video. 
• Research more in depth of primary and secondary audience research - put results into graph and conclude results. 
• More in depth research into New Media 
• Include information on the software and hardware which I plan to use 

Cross-Media Advertising

Definition of cross media - advertising with the use of different media types intergrated together to achieve higher value and wider audience reach. 

An example of cross media is music videos. The visual image of an music video is made to accompany an artist's record and the lyric of the song. They are mostly made for artistic and promotional intentions.
Music videos are used to promote the artists single or album and influence the audience to go out and buy the artist's products.

New Media - Adobe Photoshop CS5

The latest version of photoshop has many new and updated features in which positively influence the creative and reduce time in which it takes to edit photographs.
Photoshop CS5's new features include:

• Complex selections made easy
• Content-Aware fill
• Superior HDR imaging
• Extraordinary painting effects
• Easier UI management
• State-of-the-art raw image processing
• Puppet Warp
• Efficient workflow
• 64-bit performance
• GPU-accelerated features
• Black-and-white conversion
• Photoshop companion apps for iPad
• Adobe Color Lava color mixing app for iPad
• Adobe Eazel painting app for iPad
• Adobe Nav productivity app for iPad

Ratings (taken of http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html) :

Reviews : http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/software/356920/adobe-photoshop-cs5

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/reviews/7690298/Adobe-Photoshop-CS5-review.html

In the production of my own media products, for example the digi-pak and magazine advert, Photoshop will be useful to use in editing and design.

Useful Technologies- New Media - The Qr Code.

When researching into existing products the use of the Quick Response Code came up reguarly in different products. For example, I found many album adverts providing these codes for the audience's use to scan, using their smart-phones to recieve more information on the artists and their new album's, also linking them to digitally purchase the items.


 Qr codes are a two-dimensional bar code that contain information which usually feature URLs that take the consumers to a certain website which relates to the subject they are placed on. The consumer can learn more about the certain subject. - (Mobile tagging)


Decoding the information within the QR code can be done with any camera-phone that has the QR reader software.


Secondary Research - An useful article on QR codes by Educause Learning Initiative

This research is useful for the production of my own media product, as technologies like the QR codes will be interpreted and made in such things as the magazine advert.

Media Time Plan

10th October - Technologies - Useful for my media production- info on Qr Codes.

11th October - Research into new media - Photoshop cs5 & into Cross-media advertising

Research on existing products - The Jewel Case & Digipak

Jewel Case

This example is of a quite simple design of a jewel case. Within this project I am to produce a dijipak product which is like this but with additional panels within the design. Researching into the contrasts and comparisions of the different designs is useful as it helps identify the construction and conceptions of a digipak. The design is obviously important as it would be the first thing the audience/buyer would see, therefore would want it to be attractive and pleasing to the eye. 

Jewel Case Design

Example of Jewel Case

The back of the jewel case shows the content of the CD and also works with the themed artwork of the whole album. 

6- Panel Digi pak Design

6-panel Digipak

example: 

Definition : 

"Digipacks are a type of CD packaging made out of card stock or other heavy paper/cardboard material. Digipacks can flip open like a book, or it can have three parts, so that one portion of the packaging opens to the right and one to the left, with the CD in the center portion. Usually, the portion of the digipack that hold the CD is made of plastic like a traditional jewel case CD - the plastic part is simply attached to the paper background.
Digipacks were first created by MeadWestvaco, and their product, called Digi-Pak, is trademarked. However, as the format became more popular and began to be used by more manufacturers, the generic "digipack" came to be used to describe all soft CD packaging.
Digipacks have pros and cons:

• They look nice, and many bands and labels like to use them for aesthetic reasons. The three section digipack sleeves opens up more design options because there is more room. However, they're more expensive than traditional liner notes and jewel cases.
  
• Digipacks don't crack like jewel cases do, but they will rip and eventually the paper begins to peel apart and separate.
  
• The trays in digipacks break much more often then in jewel cases. There's not as much protection since the outer portion of made of paper, so the teeth that hold the CD in place crack and fall out easily.
  
• When the teeth of the tray does break in a digipack, the CD falls out of the bottom of the digipack, because unlike jewel cases, there is nothing to hold it in.
  
• Digipacks can be more environmentally friendly than jewel cases because they can be made of recycled paper - however, they aren't always in fact made in this way.
  

Digipacks look great, but if you're just starting out and money is tight, looking for ways to cut your manufacturing costs is important. Stretching your budget to because you like digipacks aesthetically is not a good investment."

(Taken from http://musicians.about.com/od/ah/g/digipacksleeve.htm by Heather McDonald)

Secondary Audience Research - Examples of Completed Questionare + Results

Conclusion of Results

From the results of the questionnaire I found out about certain codes and conventions of pop - videos and the audience's attitude and perception towards them. Many of results showed that the auidences of pop-videos believe that women are being advertised in very oversexualised ways which also giving viewers the wrong perception of reality. This is because they are being presented as sex objects(in very little clothing) to attract the male attension and audience and appear to be visually perfect, making auidences believe these airbrushed and edited women convey true beauty and what is meant to be. (Even changing the views of society.)
I also found out that men in pop-videos seemed to be shown as the dominant star figure for the young generation of males to look up to and women to be attracted to. Money, wealth and power are also represented in videos to appear important. This could have a negative effect on the audience showing that in life only wealth and money matter and it is the only way of becoming successful.

Also the audience from which I investigated preferred to watch a music video than just listen to it, which shows a good video is useful for a song to be successful. 

The location in which pop-videos are preceived to be at is primarily in the city and night-clubs. The second place suggested by the auidience was a location in which gives the song more meaning and links to the song lyric.

From this result I learnt alot about pop-videos within media and its affect upon society.
Within our own video we shall try and challenge the sterotypical view of men within pop-videos and show them in a more subtle and less distrupive way.

Time Planning.

4th october - Finish Magazine Advert Analysis

                   - Summary/ Results of Questionare so far.

Research into Music Genre

The genre of the music track for the music video in which I will make, falls into the genre of electropop. Therefore research into this genre is very important to reveal the certain conventions and codes within electopop and how I will translate them into the certain works such as the video, magazine advert and digipak.

Web definitions:

Electropop (also called technopop) is a form of electronic music that is made with synthesizers, and which first flourished from 1978 to 1981. The genre has seen a revival of popularity and influence since the late 2000s. "Electropop" is the short form of "electronic pop".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro-pop

A modern version of electro-pop is David Guetta feat Usher - Without you

 This track shows the influence from the begining of the genre in the 1980s, for example Blue Monday by New Order which was released in 1983.

http://www.britain.tv/entertainment_britishmusic_80s.shtml

^: A useful article on music in the 1980s and origins of electro-pop.

MTV's Most Wanted: Jessie J - Who You Are

MTV's Most Wanted: Jessie J - Who You Are

Pop music and artists passion for music is shown in this video done by mtv.
Interesting to see where the artists get their ideas from and how they choose to produce the different codes for the audience to read within their content of lyric, beats, videos, representation, clothing etc...