Album Cover and Magazine Advert: Draft of Magazine Advert

I was searching through images of old photos of people wearing gas mask, probably during a war period. There was some really cool, effect photos but the one which stood out to me was this quite chilling picture of an innocent girl wearing a gas mask. I liked this picture as it was positioned well, with a centered image. I liked the innocents of the girl with the white dress and long hair.

The gasmask is such a contrast to the image and brings in a dark feel, a characteristic we are trying to give across in our video. 

I import the image into photoshop to play about with. i recently download some really cool brushes of skulls and scientific objects. I like the simplicity of the picture so did not want to edit it to much, but I used a skull brush over the face of the gas mask. 

We thought it would be a good idea to recreate this image with Chloe wearing a gas mask for our advert.

Album Cover and Magazine Advert: Draft of Music Video Poster

Album Cover and Magazine Advert: Fonts

To create a brand image we need to find a font which symbolizes the image we want to give The Prodigy. I looked through dafont.com, which is a website which has thousands of different fonts. I looked through the different categories, such as 'Distorted' and 'Eroded'

After looking through i found two fonts which stood out to me.

The first is called 'An Unfortunate Event.' I liked it as it was quite neat, however had a horror feeling about it. I could imagine this font on the front cover and it suiting. Here it is:

The second is called 'Breakaway.' This is the opposite to the previous font, it is more bold and prominent. The cracked bit gives the font some character and something we want to give to the image. When i saw this i could more imagine this font being used on the magazine advert, so that words such as 'OUT NOW' to stand out.

Album Cover and Magazine Advert: Album name and Track list

Album Name:

Spitfire

Tracklist:

1. Spitfire

2. Smoke To My Lungs

3. Tracker

4. Buffalo Ball 

5. Goodnight

6. Contact The North

7. Never Shoot The Messenger 

8. In Denial 

9. Watch Your Mouth 

10. Crooked Mind

11. Phoenix

12. Broken Youth

13. Flying Over

Album Cover and Magazine Advert: Draft Album Cover

 This is our first draft of the album CD cover. The initial idea is getting images of a real life spitfire and and using PhotoShop we are going superimpose the image to make it look like the spitfire is crashing into the ground with flames billowing out of the windows.  

Obviously this is not final and we will be adding to it later but we are thinking it's our main idea at the moment.

Album Cover and Magazine Advert: The Prodigy's previous fonts 1992 - 2011

We need to create a whole new image for The Prodigy. This will mean that we need to find a new font other than the original, which is well known and is related to the band. They have had three different fonts.

Here they are:

The first was with the Prodigy from 1992 - 1994, 2 albums (Experience and Music For The Jilted Generation). This font is quite psychedelic and a homage to Jimi Hendrix's image on the album of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, it is similar font. I am not to keen on this font as it is copy a image and is not original. I also think it is not suited to the music, however it is link with the drugs involved around the music, like it did with Hendrix's music.

The second was used for one album in 1997 (The Fat of The Land). This image i think is quite plain and simple, something that doesnt link with music. However the image next to it is an insect, is quite interesting as it is unusual a a sysmbol for their music. The use of a image next to name could be something we can endorse into our version.

The third font was again used for one album in 2004 (Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned.) I think this font has gone back in time to when The Prodigy used the psychedelic font. It is similar to there first album. Im am not to impressed with this as again i don't think it links with there genre of music, it goes against genre conventions.

The final and most recent font is this, it was used on the album (Invaders Must Die.) This is my favourite font as it is really recognisable and memorable. It is very jagged and bold, this is a font that i think relates to the genre of music. For our image we will want to create something similar.

Album Cover and Magazine Advert: The Prodigy album covers 1992 - 2011

Here are all of The Prodigy's album covers from 1992 - 2011. I will analysis each one and see parts we like and see if we can take any inspiration.

1992 - Experience

This is the albums debut album, when they were new to the music scene. The cover is very simple and plain, using basic colours of white and black. I believe The Prodigy choose this design as the did not want to take a risk of having a crazy or controversial cover, they played it safe, however from doing this the album may not get the same attention as something 'outside the box.' 

They are going against conventions with the simple design, however it could be that they wanted to contrast the music and be unpredictable.

1994 - Music For The Jilted Generation 

This album was the second from the band. This cover is a bit more adventurous and eye catching. I think this design could be seen as quite disturbing from the image of someone being trapped in metal and screaming for help. However again the cover is a simple layout, nothing to confusing. The image could be a message from the band, maybe on the subject of the music industry and acts being trapped and not being able to make music they want.

1997 - The Fat Of The Land

This is the third cover, when i saw this i was very surprised as it is a whole new direction from the last covers. The cover is very vibrant with colour and stands out with orange's and blue's. The reason for the crab is something i couldn't fully find out, but my thoughts on it is that it is random, this could be a relation to the drugs at the time. The effects of the distortion and blurry could also be a relation to drugs and the feeling of being 'high'.

 After doing some research into the album, i found that the title is saying which relates to being wealthy and that fact the cover is on an exotic beach, emphasis the message of wealth. 

2004 - Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned

This the forth album from The Prodigy. I think this cover is alot more adventurous and 'outside of the box.' There are very vibrant colours used and odd imagesm this will cause the album to stand out on the shelves and catch the customers eyes.

For me the album cover does not link to the title, i would assume to see visions of guns and war. However they have shown vision of war with the general hat, but in a very light hearted way.

2009 - Invaders Must Die

Homework: Max Davies: Album Cover Analysis: The Prodigy - The Fat Of The Land

Fat Of The Land is the third album from The Prodigy,It was released 30 June 1997 on XL Records. The title is saying which relates to being wealthy and the fact the cover is on an exotic beach, emphasis the message of wealth.

It went straight to number 1 in the UK album charts. The album has gone double platinum, selling over 2 million copies. The album entered the Guinness World Records as the fastest selling UK album and was nominated for a grammy. The album had three singles: Firestarter, Breathe, Smack My Bitch Up.

When i saw this i was very surprised as it is a whole new direction from the last covers. The cover is very vibrant with colour and stands out with orange's and blue's. The reason for the crab is something i couldn't fully find out, but my thoughts on it is that it is random, this could be a relation to the drugs at the time. The effects of the distortion and blurry could also be a relation to drugs and the feeling of being 'high'.

Homework: Efosa: Album Advert Analysis

Homework: Max Davies: Album Advert Analysis

I was looking through a few magazines at adverts which related to The Prodigy and really caught my eye.  I have mountains of magazines as I subscribe to magazines like Q, NME and MOJO, all magazines I love and have great features. The music Q focuses on is mainly mainstream Rock with other genres which people are enjoying. NME focus on new and upcoming Rock and alternative acts, having many interviews with unsigned bands. MOJO is one of my favourite as it has many features of old 1960’s Rock and talks about the past, bands like The Doors or Pink Floyd.

After flicking through a few magazines I came across The Horrors advertising their new album ‘Skying’. It was the back page of the September 2011 issue of Q. I thought Horrors similar to The Prodigy as they both portray the punk image.

The Horrors are 5 man, English band formed in 2005. It is made up of Faris Badwan, Joshua Hayward, Tom Cowan, Rhys Webb, Joe Spurgeon. There genre is Post-punk/Psychedelic and are signed to XL Recordings.

The album being advertised is ‘Skying’, which was released 11 July 2011 and is the bands third album.


Album Cover:

For this advert they have used the album cover, this is so people can get a recognition of the album and hopefully remember it when they are in the shop. This is convention of album adverts, however some artists use different pictures.

The image is very simple but effective and relates to the album name ‘Skying.’ Skying could relate to drug use and being ‘high in the sky.’

The image is very peaceful and relaxing, maybe a message to the customers that its an album they can relax to.

However the picture is simple but the effects are huge feature of this, they use a contrast of colour with reds and greens. Again eye catching for the magazine reader.

It is very psychedelic feeling from this advert, something which relates to the music the album offer.

The Font used is simple but bold and takes up the main part of the picture.

The advert is split up in two, one the album cover art and then the album reviews and the artist name.

The album reviews is a convention for this as it gives the reader a reason to go buy the album. The reader are giving a rating from a reliable source like magazines (Q, Uncut) and newspapers (The Guardian, The Independent)

The Horros album is giving 4/5 stars through out, so this is something they will want to present and let the reader know.

Another convention is showing when the album is out, in this case the album is ‘out now.’ They may do this now to boost sales.

Music Video: Production: Filming Shoot 2

The day started well with taking some shots of Efosa playing guitar in an enclosed part of the forest. We gathered long twigs and logs, to create a creepy tent shape, showing that people may live there, this was a reference to the horror movie 'The Blair Witch Project'. The X-grip that i bought for my camera really helped to capture smoother and more interesting shots, and was a great investment. We all decided that supernatural powers would look great in the video so we dropped a box of leaves on Efosa, which we will reverse on the edit to make it look like he is using telekinetic powers to lift the leaves from the ground.
Other shots of Efosa included him dancing fast and punching and swinging his arms whilst covered in talcum powder. We shot this with the sun behind his back so that the talcum powder would have an orange glow and stand out more.

The next series of shots we did was of Max singing the lyrics into the camera. We got a long pole and attached it to my camera rig so that we could use it as a jib. This allowed us to get smooth panning shots towards Max from great heights, and makes the clip look very professional as the angles we were able to achieve with the Jib were impossible to get from a handheld rig or a tripod.

The last shot of the day was  a tricky one, me spitting white spirit into a torch of fire. The first time we did this it went very wrong, i failed to take into account wind and blew flames against it, which as a consequence backfired in my face and in a spasm of fear I threw the torch behind my back and set fire to a pile of leaves. However, our minimalist safety precautions of two bottles of water were thankfully enough to extinguish the flames before more serious damage could occur, and my face was fine apart from the beard I once had, as it is no longer.

The next two takes worked a treat as I managed to blow a modest 10 foot flame into the air without burning to death! We feel this ties in with lyrics of "Spitfire" perfectly. We examined the shots but abandoned any intuition to re-take and improve the shots from fear of death, or in the worst case burning my camcorder and starting a forest fire that could ultimately lead to the eradication of epping forest and possibly world war 3.

Music Video: Production: Overhead panning shots of max

I gaffer taped my camera rig to a pole attempting to create a makeshift jib. This worked well for overhead shots and adds a new dimension to the camerawork. 

Here is a video of how we did it. 

Music Video: Production: 2nd Day Filming: Photos

The new toy:

Hopsin:

Shots of Efosa being filmed:

D.I.Y Dan:

Music Video: Production: More Shots From First Day of Filming

Music Video: Production: New equipment

Spent my  wages on some equipment instead of just wasting it all on petrol. 

I bought a Rode VideoMic, I decided to get a compressor mic as I do a lot of music recording. Although it is worthless for shooting a music video as we cut the sound, it will still

Homework: Efosa: Kanye West Graduation Album Cover

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Homework: Max Davies: Album Cover Analysis: Fatboy Slim - You've Come A Long Way, Baby

You've Come a Long Way, Baby is the second studio album by Fatboy Slim, an English electronic dance and Big Beat musician. It was released on 19 October 1998 on the label Skint Records.

The album peaked at number one on the UK Album Chart and number thirty-four on the U.S. It hade four singles on the album: The Rockafeller Skank, Ganster Trippn’, Praise You and Right Here, Right Now, all reached the top 10 in the UK charts.

It was certified 3x platinum. In 2000, the album was ranked number 81 in Q magazine's readers' poll of the "100 Greatest British Albums Ever".

The album title was taken from a marketing slogan for the cigarette brand ‘Virginia Slims.’

The cover to this has two versions, the UK version is of the fat man, holding a cigarette and a grin on his face. The other is the US version is rather boring, it is a rack of vinyl records, the reason of this is that Americans may take offence as the obesity levels are very bad.

This is the USA version of the album cover:

Genre

From typical albums covers, the conventions are that it will have a name or image of the artist, the album name or attractive features. With this type of genre I research other

albums from the electronic dance and I found that DJ’s tend to keep there image hidden, such as The Chemical Brothers. This album complies with these conventions as Fatboy Slim is not presented, however we are lead to believe the ‘fatboy’ on the cover is the artist, as the name is fitting.

Lettering/Font

The lettering used on this cover fits with the genre as ‘Fatboy Slim’s’ font is quite urban and resembles graffiti, a subject that links with electronic dance. Slim uses this font throughout career, it is a way of establishing an artist image.

Image

The cover of ‘You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby’ is quite humorous. It is a picture of a fat boy with a cheesy grin on his face protesting the he is ‘number 1.’ This could be a message given from the DJ through the image of someone else, could be saying that he is the number 1 DJ.

The scene behind him is of an average street in America, the whole cover could be a dig at America for some reason. The back cover features a license plate with the state of Texas on it, this finalises that it is set in America. As Fatboy Slim being British, it is confusing that the cover is set in America, some audience may not agree with this as they are patriotic and refuse America music.

Star/icons

This album cover for me is a true classic as it is unexpected, a does not covey any feature of selling a stars image. The fact that he wanted a picture of a fat boy on his cover makes me laugh, as it is not as attractive and some customers may disapprove. I think the cover shows that Slim is unpredictable and no one knows his next move. This point is back up with his crazy videos.

Representation

The representation of this album is hard to relate too and understand. But this is a key characteristic to this genre of music, the fact that the music is aimed at a niche market means they can get away with a lot more unorthodox features other than a mass market.

Also stereotyping is hard to see in this cover as we are unsure on dance music’s stereotype.

Audience

Fatboy Slim is a very accomplished artist and a true master at his art, and this is why music lovers listen and enjoy his music. Customers will buy this album because of his genius and good music, this means that his marketing and representation is not as important than this. 


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Music Video: Production: Call Sheets

Music Video: Production: 1st Day Filming

So the time has come to start filming. It was wednesday 30th November and the teachers at school are on strike so we had the day of! a nice day of sounding lovely, But a day of filming is not for the faint hearted. We had an early start, we meet at Dan's at 9 30 with all our equipment. 

We had an hour meeting at Dan's to discuss the plan and what was doing today. After this we was set, Dan went to pick up Chloe, our actress for our video. We got to location at about 10 45 and began setting up , this took a while. 

The day was very long, but we got some really great shots and have a solid idea on how the video will look. We cant wait for day 2 of filming!

Max's car packed out:

Here are some pictures of location:

Here is setting up the set and our location:

To make the day even more enjoyable, Max's car battery died 

                                              

The life saver:

Music Video: Production: Idea for Introduction

We had an idea that for the beginning of the video we could use old footage of a spitfire, it would only be a few seconds. This will automatically identify our theme of the song. It is almost like a homage to the almighty Spitfire plane. Max then had an idea that to bring this footage to our music video we could have a burning affect. like this footage burns away and our footage enters.

Music Video: Pre-Production: Costume

We all wanted to use a gas mask in our video, but i decided to make my own after some prop shopping lead me to find a real one from ww2 which cost £10 pound to rent, with a £100 deposit. This sickened me to my core.

Earlier in the day a friend (Sam Goodey, another media student) had given me a balaclava, as he thought it could help me in my video and he had little use for it. I accepted his offer but had no intention of using the balaclava in the video as our thoughts were fixed on a gas mask.

Me and Efosa went to our actress' house to see what costume we could use for the video, and we ended up talking about our gas mask idea, to which she revealed that she had a paint gas mask and goggles. Later on i went to my nans house and found some portable L.E.D push lights that she takes about the house. After examining one i realized it would fit exactly into the breathing chamber. I put 2 more in the goggles and wore the mask and goggles over the balaclava with the lights on.

This is what it looks like, and it didn't cost me a penny.

When it was created, we thought i resembled Shane Meadow's film : 'Dead Man's Shoes' 

Here is the image we thought of from the film, very effect and scary!

Here is our adaptation:

Also the big man (Efosa) surprised us with his new Fro Hawk. We were asking him to do something with his hair, but we thought he wouldn't. Oh, he did!