Album Cover Designs/Experiments

My first music video idea was set on a beach, so for my first album cover idea I incorporated the beach into the design; the beach would have related to the music video, and may be associated with the acoustic genre. Also, the use of a beach fire would have been useful in illustrating the name of the album 'Time For This Light To Shine'.

I started off taking photos of the beach at Sea Pauling near Norwich, but decided that although such images may be appealing to look at, they don't promote the artist or relate to the music or it's genre. Here is an example of the photos I took of the landscape:

I also took photos of the fire, trying to capture an image with a dark surrounding so the fire stands out. The idea of having a beach fire meant the beach (and the fire) could be associated with the acoustic genre, but also the fire could relate to the name of the album. However, this too did not promote the artist himself. here is one of the photos of the fire I took:

I took photos of the artist next to the fire with his guitar. This was to try and use my initial idea of using the beach and the idea of using fire to go with the name of the album, but with the artist being shown and an acoustic guitar; this would help further enforce the acoustic genre connotation, and also promote the artist. Here is an example of the photos I took this way:

I tried to take the photos in time with when the fire gave of small embers from the top, so that the low shutter speed of the camera could capture lines of light coming from the fire rather than small specks of fire; the lines of light make the photo more attractive, but also go with the font I chose to use for the writing. The font I chose looks like glowing light/flames, and also as if someone has written it by waving a sparkler around - this goes well with the name of the album and also the images of the artist by the fire. However, the artists face is not clear enough in the images to successfully promote him on his first album, so I chose to think of a new idea. Here are two examples below:

Album Cover Research

Here are a few of the debut albums I found for acoustic artists. It has come to my attention that they all focus on the artist; they all focus on the artist's face. This may be to help promote the artist and get them well-known faster.
After realising this I decided to look into debut albums from other genres and found that there is a trend for artists' first albums to have a clear image of the artists face - then after they become well known, albums then start to focus less on the artists appearance and may use other designs.

After deciding I would conform to the generic idea of using an image of the artist's face for my album cover, I came across Queen's first album (shown below). This uses images of the band members' faces, but in conjunction with a dark black background. This style gives the image a dark feel to it. As the album I am designing a cover for would be called 'Time For This Light To Shine' after the song I made a music video for, I thought it would be good advertising/promoting to incorporate the music video's narrative into the album cover. To do this I have decided to use the black background with faces idea from the Queen album. Instead of the blackness to give the album a dark connotation, I will use a image of candle-light with the faces to give the opposite feel; the use of light in the darkness, along with the name 'Time For This Light To Shine', gives the image the connotation of 'light' rather than dark. This 'light' with the two faces (the artist and his lover from the music video) suggests that there is a 'flame' between the two people (a relationship between the two people, as in the music video). Having the artist's face on the front cover and the girl's face on the back makes his identity stand out when people see the front cover - which helps to promote the artist and help people to start to recognise who he is. The black background also help make his face stand out, to attract attention to the album cover.

Target Audience Research

Summer Research Project on Media Issues

Music Video Analysis: Avril Lavigne - 'When You're Gone'

Technological Requirements for Project

Music Video:

• Digital video camera - with a high enough amount of megapixles to capture high quality video footage to use in a music video. The camera also needs to be able connect to a computer with a firewire, so transferring the footage onto the editing software is possible.
• A computer with a sufficient editing software program - an up to date version of Adobe Elements Premiere could be useful for capturing and editing footage to make a music video.

Digi-pack:

• A still digital photo camera - with enough megapixles to produce photos of a high quality, of which can then be put digitally onto a computer to incorporate them into the print productions and edited.
• A computer with sufficient photo editing software - an up to date version of Adobe Photoshop Elements would be able to deal with the image editing tasks.
• A computer software program which has the ability to design templates for the covers of the digi-pack - a simple example being Microsoft Publisher.

Mission Statement for Production

Through our production process we aim to be able to create a successful music video for an unsigned, British, Acoustic/Acoustic Rock genre artist, along with a digi-pack. We aim for these productions to appeal to a target audience within the British public.
As a sub-target we believe that with our knowledge on the Acoustic/Acoustic Rock genre of music and through the research conducted on the target audience, we can reach out to a mainstream audience in youth culture without being a mainstream artist; we believe through our efforts, and others alike, an artist with talent in this particular music genre could flourish in the music industry. We aim to show that it is possible for a new artist to gain support from an audience/grow an existing fan base and also produce effective music videos for the tracks they create.