The panels

There are four panels for our album cover;

This will be the front cover when improved.

This is a mockup of the front cover inside panel.

This will be the inside panel of the back cover.

This is a mock up of the back cover.

Progress.

At the moment, we only have a handful of ideas but they seem to be working well. Here is an image of our work at this time and how we improved it.

We will have an image of Matthew sat on one of the graves to help reflect the idea of our song choice and music video. For this, we will use the green screen.

We want to keep the same idea throughout our album and so we have to keep the same style, colour and type of images.

Back cover.

For our back cover, we will use an image from our video and put some effects onto it such as the ripple effect and colour corrector.
The other song titles on the back cover are a mixture of Matthew's own songs titles and a few made up ones.
This is a mock up of the back cover

This would be useful to use but we would have to improve it. The font is a good size and style and fits in with our chosen genre.

We will take the text down more to the centre and possibly undo the distortion a little bit to see the image behind more clearly.

Another idea for our back cover which relates more to our video, is this;

It is an image taken from some footage of Alex and we can add song titles and improve it using photoshop.

Mock up of front cover.

Here are a couple of mock-ups for our front cover of the album.

We like the colour and effects on the second image but will have to change it if we use it and improve the text .

Plans for the ancillary tasks.

We would like to incorporate Rob Zombie's album art into our own but again make it unique. His albums usually feature him as the main image and dark lettering with alternative imagery behind, next to him or non al all. A lot of the time it only focuses on him.

Also, he uses a handful of symbols on his album covers but we do not wish to do this and hope to create our own personal style but something which will mirror the work of our case study.


The back cover of his albums are as interesting as the front for example,

For our album, the colour will be dark and abstract. We will be having the members of the band on the front cover against an abstract background.
For the inside panels, we will possibly have an image of Courtney or Alex with a dark background colour scheme which will hold the ideology of death as most metal album art does.
For the back cover of the album, we will have a list of songs and again some abstract imagery.
Because we will have to make our own artwork etc, we are going to use an image taken from our video which we use for the background. The graveyard shots and have members of the band on it either sat down or standing.

Or something more like this which also looks similar to something you would find in a Rob Zombie music video.

For our other ancillary task we have to create an advertisement for our album which are usually featured in music magazines such as Metal Hammer and Kerrang.
Our advert will be dark in colour and will consist of Alex as a zombie, holding the album up in his hand.

Or we have thought about using our poster idea from our video, in which Courtney is seen in and instead, placing the band there for our advert.

We could also use both ideas as we can place the band inside the poster while Alex peers over the top or from another angle.














Other ideas for our front cover are that we can use a still shot of Alex's hand when he is rising from the ground and colour correct it. Then on the inside of the front cover, we will have a shot of the whole band  in costume and possibly no instruments but we will try both to see which looks more professional. On the inside of the back cover we will have a still shot of courtney in her poster and for the back a distorted image of a graveyard shot we filmed.

Feedback

This is progressing nicely and I like your font choice. Don't forget to upload your plans for the ancillary tasks!

Feedback

This is the font that we prefer and as we found, it was also the most effective as it gained 8 votes whereas the others had non apart from  the font shown below it which had 5 votes.
The first image is the best font to use as it gives off the metal genre and it is effective. However, we will alternate it through photoshop and then use it for our album.

Ancillary tasks

We are now in the process of planning our digipacks. this will consist of an album cover (including four panels for the inside of the CD) and an advert for the poster.
We will require photos of the band members and alternate them to suite our album and we will get these by friday.
At the moment, we are working on the best fonts to use and to do this, we have decided to pick a handful of fonts and show them to the class to gain feedback to see which one is the most effective.
These are some ideas that we have come up with,
We will show these to the class and see which one is the best to use.

The album will be named 'Memoirs of a dead man' which will possibly be in scratched font like this.

For the font we want a gothic style like the kind Rob Zombie uses but with our own personal touch to it and for this we are going to use photoshop. We want to portray a kind of unreal image which mirrors the genre and as most metal bands use a dark font and it tends to be scratchy in most cases, we will use one similar.

Weather warnings

Due to the bad weather in the area, the college has been closed and so we have not been able to edit or obtain footage by our deadline. This creates a problem but hopefully workshops after college will help us make the time that we lost up.

Footage still required.

We are still needing to film the interior shots when Courtney is sleeping while Alex is watching her and we have come up with an idea to film these shots in the college 'sick room' which has a clinical look to it and this could possibly mirror the idea that she is indeed insane in some way as she is surrounded by an institutional setting.

Recent changes.

As we only have a limited amount of time left and one of the members of the band we were going to use was not available, we have decided to use Francesca as the guitarist instead.
Also we are a little behind on obtaining all of our footage and so we decided to schedule the rest for the rest of this week and we will work on the editing during the lessons and workshop times which we have booked out. We should have finished ll of our filming and editing by the weekend.

Editing update.

From all of the footage we have, we have begun to edit the band and done most of the green screen work. However, we will need some more shots mainly for the narrative.

update.

As we are limited with time we have had to make some changes. We filmed some footage in Corporation park instead of the cathedral grounds. This was better as it is located closer to college and we managed to film the opening and most of the narrative shots.

Also, we did not have time to get white contact lenses for Alex (the main character) so instead we will either photoshop the eye colour out or not use any at all.

 

These are images of us filming these shots.

Update

We have recently filmed the majority of our band footage. On Thursday 18th Nov we captured footage of our singer (Matthew Pick), bassist (Ciaran McGloughlin) and drummer (Nathaniel Conlan); however, we still need footage of the guitarist (Billy Reid). We hope to be filming him later on next week, as well as Alex Reid and Courtney White on Monday.

Photoshop poster.

As we mentioned before, we will be making a poster using photoshop to feature in our video. This is the original poster we altered.












This is what it looks like now and how we plan to use it.

We purposely darkened out the coca cola logo as we cannot feature any advertising in our video.

Costume ideas and characters.

Our actors will all be in certain costume which will all relate to death in some way and we hope that this will mirror the storyline and our own artist.


Alex Reid who will be the male character and will be in a full costume. This will be a zombie-like costume and so will have white contact lenses, white face make up with bruising and torn clothing.  We want him to look like a zombie but not completely repulsive so we need him to have some remaining human qualities within his costume.

Courtney White who will be our female character and she will first be in clean clothing and look like a normal person. Then when she has been killed, se will also have white contact lenses but will still be in clean clothing. She will be wearing this dress for most of the music video. However, when she is in bed, she will be in a white nightgown.

These are the two main characters and the rest of our actors will be Matthew Pick, Ciaron Mcloughlin, billy Reid and Nathanael Conlan who will all be dressed similar to one another. Their costume will consist of dark clothing (possibly torn). Dark clothing is usually associated with metal and is typically seen in music videos.  For example, Balrog have a deceased look even when performing.   

This is what we will do with our band, we will make them look deceased by adding white make up, fake blood, dark eye make up and clothing.

Our main artist played by Matthew Pick.

This will be our main character played by Alex Reid.











































This is Courtney White and she will be playing the female main character in our video.

Filming schedules and first editing.

Our first shots were filmed on the 14th November 2010.  This was to gain exterior shots that we will use for the green screen and we will edit the colour of the background and make it look more professional.

This is one of our first shots and we plan to use this for a background.

We hope to film all of the green screen shots, this includes the majority of the band performance on thursday the 18th November 2010. For this we will need our main character (female) and our band.
We will both be filming for this. Also, we will finish off all of our footage next monday the 22nd November 2010.

This is a picture of our first edit from the footage we shot on the 14th November 2010 using final cut express.

Feedback

You have added to your blog, so well done. Keep working through my feedback comment on your research - there is still scope to gain some more marks here, although I ma aware you have been making some changes! There is evidence of planning on your blog but there should be more. Some missing items:

• props/costume/make-up ideas - take photos??
• cast shots and reasons why these actors have been used - include shots?
• list of roles undertaken for each shoot
• you have some vague scheduling posts - keep adding these as situations change etc.
• a post on how you will achieve matching the sound to the visuals
• risk assessment forms - download/ complete and scan?
• a moodboard? 

Try and keep working on this but also get that footage!

Band performance

On the 13th November 2010, we will film a graveyard for a period of time and use this not only for location shots but for the performance of the band.
After we get footage of the graveyard, we will then bring in all equipment I.e instruments etc and film the band on green screen once they are in full costume. Then we can easily place the footage behind them and it will seem as though they are performing in a graveyard. This is a typical idea for artists within the metal genre as they are often associated with death and so the graveyard is the perfect place.

We will film them as a whole for at least two shots. These will be long shot and medium shots. Then there will be a close up of each member of the band while they are performing.

For all our other footage, we will film it in various locations with plenty of close ups, medium shots and angles. For example, when he is rising from the grave, there will be a high angle on him.

Filming schedule

We hope to be filming the majority of our external shots on 13/11/10.

Location

We wish to use a graveyard, which means getting the church's permission. We have two ideas of where to film the graveyard scene (both of them in Blackburn): one is Blackburn Cathedral's graveyard, and the other is a converted church that now belongs to the Citizen's Advice Bureau. Both are authentic Gothic churches that have an ethereal atmosphere to them.

Storyboard

This is our 1st Draft of the storyboard:

Feedback

The research section is looking stronger -well done for adding to some of your earlier posts.

A few more pointers:

• At end of post on metal conventions, add a brief reflection on what you can learn from this for your product - what will you need to do?
• After all the video analyses, why not add a short reflection post: What Can We Learn? Sum up what you may want to copy/use from the videos studied and what conventions you will need to adhere to... this will pull all this work together by focusing on your product.
• Album Sales - what does this imply for your project?
• Target Audience - is the gender more male than female? Special Interests - gothic culture/ horror? film? "darkness"...
• Institution - RRunner Records - link to how this would be a good label for your artists and why.... discuss the role of the label in creating music videos and how this works - see me if you are unsure. Think about why labels like music videos - what do they do? You identify some TV channels, what about the online world???
• Branding - need more analysis of Rob Zombie's image and how/ what creates it? Possibly look at his image across album covers and a few videos to see how it is sustained.... note how it is crafted to appeal to the fan. Then outline your ideas for your artist - name, look, font, colour, image.... Try and make it a bit different to Rob to show creativity/ originality?

Original Video - stress how its main emphasis is on an important but obscure film - intertextuality - that many may not get. State that your focus is on narrative and performance to create a more relevant video for modern audiences? Could also comment that cover versions are not that unusual - can you think of any recent ones? They often need to offer a slightly new slant on the original and may help gain more attention for a new artist?

You have made a start on your planning and now need to get this finalised and on your blog!

Digipack

Heavy Metal album arts differs greatly, depending on the look and sound of the band. They range from sombre, colourless photos with overtones of impending doom (especially favoured by bands such as Megadeth) to extremely graphic art or photographs, usually depicting extreme violence or sexual deviance, eg. the volume of album art from Buffalo, New York death metal band Cannibal Corpse. Other themes include: Satanism/anti-Catholicism, death, war, inner-turmoil, ect. Below is a slideshare presentation, featuring a selection of album art: