What Is a Digipak and It's Importance?

Part of our coursework is to create a digipak to go alongside our music video.

A digipak is something which is used to hold a CD in for when an artist how released a single. They are sold in shops such as HMV and another purpose of it is to advertise the media product you are selling. It is important that the digipak you create will stand out to audiences and potential customers because you want them to buy YOUR product and not someone else's. It will also help to identify your genre because if you have a heavy metal band with  a pretty flower as the cover, people will assume you are more of  a soft pop band.

Here is an example of Green Day's digipak. You can see from the colours they use it is a rock band because the colours and what they connote.

 

Pitch Idea Based On Lyrics

 

 

For this task we were given a set of lyrics we had never seen before and asked to pitch how you would make the music video. We done this because when we make our music video we will need to come up with ideas for our one and be able to understand how to come up with these ideas.

As I didn't know how the song went, it meant I had to read the lyrics and try and make a narrative out of it and make it how I am picturing it going in my head. 

How Many Shots are Used Within a Music Video?

Music videos differentiate with how many shots they use depending on the genre. I have noticed this from counting the amounts of shots different music videos use and I have researched into why they do this.
For example a rap video will use a lot more shots than a country pop video. The reason for this is because the pace of the beat of the song. If it is a fast rap video they will tend to use lots of shots to keep up with the beat and keep the audience entertained, however, if it is a slow paced it is likely to have less shots because it is an emotional meaningful song where the audience need to be able to recognise certain facial expressions in order to understand the ong/video.

Conventions of Music Genres

Conventions of music genres

 

R&B

Male

-Smart/Smart casual
-The majority of R&B music videos nowadays have male artists dressed in smart/smart casual clothing. This could be to represent class or status in society. Artists such as Drake, Chris Brown, Usher, Ne-Yo and many more all follow the Smart/Smart casual look.

-Tattoos are a big part of R&B culture again, with the majority having lots of tattoos all visible to the public. This could be used to show creativity and independence from other artists. Even if two artists sound similar, the tattoos and personalities they have could set them apart from each other so much that they wouldn't be seen as similar anymore.

-Jewellery is the most conventional piece of clothing in both R&B and Hip-Hop genres. In every R&B video you see, some sort of jewellery, whether that be a watch, a necklace, or an earring, the artist will have some form of jewellery, again, showing wealth and status in society.

 

Women

-Classy/Very Little clothing
-Depending on the sub-genre of the song, and the song itself, the women in music videos are usually dressed in accordance to the song lyrics or narrative of the music video. Women in the videos generally wear classy but revealing clothes, making them attractive to the males, who are the target audience for the conventional R&B music video.

-Jewellery- Again, women also follow the idea of having jewellery in the music videos, whether they are the main artist or just an actress. This catches the eye of the male, which is who the target audience is, therefore doing its job in making the target audience watch the video, even if it is just because of the women, and not the actual song itself.

Rock


-Display the bands performing on stage
- Uneasy camera movements
-Hand held shots to represent a frantic/manic atmosphere
(these camera shots and movements emphasise the roughness of the music, as you do not want clean smooth cuts and movements that you would use in perhaps pop music)
-Not common to use special effects, for example, green screen or CGI
- Usually deep dark colours are used to compliment the style of music.




This video by Imagine Dragons could be classed as rock but it has brought new iconography to the rock genre and has modernised it.

Hip Hop Music and Rap Music

The primary focus of Hip Hop is on beatboxing and DJ scratching. Rap music is another subset of this genre, and it revolves around the artist rapping to a fixed beat. Though this genre evolved in the ghettos of the United States, today it has spread to mainstream culture all around the world, and has become a multi million dollar industry. This genre of hip hop songs started involving more and more people during the 1970s.

 

You tend to find a mixture of narrative and performance based music videos for Hip Hop and Rap. The majority of music videos for this style tend to be set in a lower class area, on the streets. You find a wide range of different settings and styles for these genres however they are predominantly set in lower class areas.
Artists tend to feature within their own videos.

 

Lyric Analysis and It's Importance

Most music videos contain a narrative. Usually the lyrics within the song are used to either reflect or help enhance the emotions conveyed in the narrative; this is why analysing lyrics is important. Without looking at the lyrics before planning out and pitching a music video idea, your vision and lyrics could clash and not complement each other.

According to Goodwin's theory, the lyrics and the visuals should match at some points. Looking back at music videos that i have analysed, I have noticed this and it has made me think about the lyrics to our own song and how we can incorporate Goodwin's theory of the relationship between the lyrics and visuals and execute it in our final video.

Underneath displays a picture of my lyric analysis for the song 'My Immortal'- Evanescence.
I had never of heard of this song before so it meant I could have a go at making a music video for the first time as to what I think it would go like.

What Music Videos Have The Most Views and Why?

For this post I have decided to research what music videos have the most views on YouTube. I am doing this because I will be able to identify WHY they have this amount of views and what makes them so good. If I can do this then it might help me to find out what people want from a music video and it could potentially give me ideas as to what to include in our video to make it as popular as possible.

The most viewed video on Youtube is PSY - GANGNAM STYLE. This video has over 2 billion views and took over the web in the middle of June. This video kicked off over the social media and it went viral very quickly. Soon the whole world knew of this song and knew of the dance which came along with it.

I think the reason for this doing so well and being the only musioc video to reach over 2 billion views is because the idea was different and it had a dance which went along with it what people could enjoy and copy. This then went all over the social media and became more and more known and was soon playing everywhere so people can have fun and enjoy the dance.

Magazine Advert Analysis 2

I found this magazine advert for the album from Jessie J “WHO YOU ARE”.

 There are the obvious features such as artists name to make it clear who is being advertised, the album name to show what is being advertised. There is always an eye catching image, whether it be of the artist or a unique conceptual image, this not only shows us who the artists are but also gives an indication to the genre and artist style. A release date is often shown to highlight when the audience can get hold of the album and quite often ways of downloading the album/song to show where and how the audience can get hold of the music, making it easy will increase sales.  Song featured in the album is also common, often well known, chart music to get the audience hooked into why they should go away and buy the album/song, along with the new album cover to show what they can buy, also if its easily recognisable when they see it in shops they will be inclined to pick up a copy. Websites are often added to an advert to make it easy for an audience to know how to find out more, also to create a further possibly interactive relationship between artist and audience. Quite often an artist will have a certain font or logo that they are associated with, this helps an audience identify who the artist is and learn more about their style/genre. Occasionally the record label will have their logos printed small onto the adverts to build up artist profile, and audience can see who represents them and others they are associated with.

 

 

 

Jessie J's magazine advert meets many of the typical contentions, her name, album name, eye-catching image, hit singles, guest star/s, her own website and also logos of record labels. The advert itself if very striking, with the uses of black, white and gold. This gold colour may connote that she is expensive and everyone will want it because this album is something special and luxurious as is gold.

She is easily recognisable with her signature black bob with block fringe, matching with her dark clothing, makeup and nail varnish. The close up of her looking face on into the camera takes up the top two thirds of the advert, making it fully focused on her, and being her debut album it also helps to create a strong, fierce artist persona. The bottom third of the advert is taken up with the important information needed in the magazine like the album name, hit singles, website and record labels, these stand out well from the black background with the uses of white and gold and also a very simple 'caps' font so it is therefore bold and easy to use. Her name is pasted across the image of her in her signature font, also in gold to keep the typical genres of wealthy and powerful, which links well with her strong image. And by showing her website address fans can create a further relationship with the artist, finding out more about her, helping to create loyal fans.