Analysis of Magazine Advert for an album

Gwen Stefani

Research on Magazines

Our magazine advert for our music album would have to feature in magazines that are young female children would like to read and also magazines that older girls would be interested. As the content in both of these types of magazines would probably not be interesting f for each girl.

For our younger target audience we would feature it in magazines such as Total Girl, and Girl Power

Again Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus) is pictured on this cover this shows how iconic she is in this younger female target group which means that our magazine advert should appear here because our target group is interested in things such as this.

For our older target group Seventeen magazine is an ideal magazine to feature our magazine advert inside. This is because the magazine is popularly read by teenage girls therefore it would be a good magazine to promote our album.

Magazine Advert Training

This took place also on Photoshop on an Apple Mac

The same rules applied of making a digipak applied to making a magazine advert.

We first practised on a picture already on the PC. We had to select a background photo and apply second layer (which was the picture of the iphone) onto the background.

We practised with the lasso tool selecting just the image of the phone and the hand

The toolbar on the side of the image are the effects that can manipulate the picture you can change the saturation, brightness, add effects such as blurring the picture adding shadows, glows.

Music Labels

Our music label is named S.O.C productions which is a combination of the first letter of the names of the people in our group.

We were advised that logos for music labels should not contain too many colours, that is why we stuck with the colours black and pink.

The pink, because it is a re-occurring theme in our music video and black, because it connotes professionalism.

"Debbie" is an artist who produces soul/pop rock/R&B music. Therefore we wanted to make sure that our artists on our labels produce similar sounding music

For example LA Face Records is an American music label


The genre of music it produces are mostly R&B and pop rock. Its popular artists include Avril Lavigne who produces mostly pop rock music, Toni Braxton who always produces R&B soulful music and Pink who produces a mixture of Pop rock and R&B. LA face diversifies its music it produces and diversifies its artists as Pink is very different from Toni Braxton

Since we have 2 distinctive age groups in our target audience we really did not want to limit the type of music we produced.

Hollywood Records is owned by the Walt Disney Company as Disney wanted to launch a music label rather than just film. Unlike La FACE records its genre is listed as pop and rock. Hollywood Records is probably very specific because it has a synergy with Disney channel. This means the actors turned artists would be produced by Hollywood records. Demi Lovato, Jonas Brothers, Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana) are all produced by Hollywood records which can explain their success. Also these artists were the artist featured in my mood board signifying they are important figures to our target audience.


S.O.C productions can be likened to LA Face records and Hollywood Records. We want to create a synergy of these 2 existing labels and produce music that includes Pop rock, rock, R&B & Soul music, and be known for producing the music of Disney stars.

Here is an example of the music artists we would like to produce
Justin Beiber currently producing pop-R&B music

Demi Lovato produces pop rock & R&B music. She has featured in popular disney movies such as Camp Rock and stars in her own Disney Show called Sonny With a Chance

Jazmin Sullivan, she is an artist that will very appeal to our older target audience because of her strong vocals. She produces R&B, soul, and pop music

Use of Digipaks

Do you think Digipaks are an outdated form of music promotion, What is the best form of music Promotion

Digipaks are mostly used for CD singles and special editions of CDs.

It was trademarked by several companies in 2000 which was 10 years ago. There has been a significant change in culture to the promotion of artists since 2000 therefore I believe that the use of digipaks is usually outdated by they might be important when launching a new artist because the digipak could be used as memorabilia.

Changes in Promotions
Myspace


Myspace was originally just a social networking site where people all over the world could set up personalised accounts and talk to friends via the internet. It expanded and also became a starting block for artists to feature their music. Nowadays a lot of artists have been discovered through Myspace. Myspace also expanded to become Myspace Music where artists can feature their music and music videos. This is another way to become recognised to the public if you are an upcoming music artist

You-tube

Youtube is probably by far the most popular form of promotional for anyone regardless of if you are a musician. It is a video sharing website where you can upload videos and watch videos. Specifically Justin Beiber was discovered on you tube by just uploading videos of him singing he is now regarded to some people, specifically those in our target audience, as iconic in the pop rock music genre.



Music Review Sites
Pitchfork
Metacritic
Music Critic
MTV
Billboard

These are a couple of online musical reviews. I think this is a better promotional tool for artists than digipaks. This could relate to the issue of hegemony as people could think people like Music journalists or album reviewers, that critique albums are specialised in a way to understand what is "good music" and what is "bad music" therefore what they say about an artist's music is influential because it could popularise an artist or it could be an end to the career depending on the critique.

Analysis of our Digipack

This was our finished digipack. From the first digipack I posted we the creativity of the pictures and editing of the pictures look better. We knew digipacks gave the chance for artists to express their creativity and a bit of their personality that is why our artist is posing in both of her outfits which both represent her as a person. She is Debbie as the diva expressed through the dress then Debbie as normal expressed through the pyjamas it was important for our audience to see this in the digipack because some may like one side of her better than the other

We also included the track list of songs because this appears on mostly all digipacks. We also included an inspirational quote from an inspirational woman so perhaps Debbie's fans can view her as a role model

Photoshoot November 24th

After our first photoshoot and after making our first digipak overall as a group we were not satisfied with the photos so we decided to take more pictures today.

By purchasing things that would appeal to our target audience such as hot pink and sparkly brown eyeshadow, lip stick, false eye lashes we thought this would make the photo shoot better and we also thought that it would stand out more in our magazine advert and digipak.

Preparation

We had to make sure the 3 point lighting was set up (back, filler and key lights) so that the pictures would appear better once uploaded on the computer. I was also making sure to be more inventive with the poses and camera angles that I took the photographs so that they wouldn't all look the same.

Camera angles included high angles, low angles, and Point of View angles, and side angles.

We also had close ups, long shots and medium shots

We also asked our singer to be more 'playful' so it would appeal to the target audience

After the photoshoot we had roughly around 300 photos to choose from that would appear on our digipak and our magazine advert

Digipak Training

Digipak training took place on a software called Photoshop.

Here we got to experiment with the programme and manipulate the pictures, and text to suit how we wanted.

The Basics
1) Every picture or image on Photoshop is on a layer
2) Name the layers so you know which picture or text you are working with
3)Press shift when you are resizing an image/text so the composition does not change
4)Lasso tool allows you to select parts on image that you want to choose
Go to Select, Inverse, then backspace when you want to get rid of parts of an image
5) Your image cannot go over the 'spine' on the digipak.


Unfortunately the images we had taken for our digipak could not be obtained on my PC so I had to practise using Photoshop with other images.


I also had the chance to play around with the text and change the colour and font

Photoshoot November 17th

On this day we had our first photo shoot with our singer. These were the pictures we were going to use for the digipak and magazine advert.

We brought the props that we needed to take photos of such as the pink radio, high heels, and pearls.

We also brought a white glossy sheet so the pictures of the props would create a professional look if they were placed upon the sheet.



This is an example of how the pictures looked when they were made on our digipak

Photoshoot Training

n this tutorial we learned about the important things to remember in order to take a good photo. This tutorial was lead by an professional photographer.

The 4 basic things we need to remember when taking a photo is
Composition
Lighting
Exposure
Post production

Composition dealt with the rule of thirds meaning that when we take a picture we imagine the picture as we are looking into a grid. The object we are taking the photo of should lie in the points of that grid because this is where peoples eyes are drawn to in a photograph.

However all photos don't have to necessary follow this rule.

Exposure- This deals with high key lighting and low key lighting. When taking pictures using high key lighting, we were advised to use a big white light

Low key lighting uses harsher lights and have mysterious feel to them.

Lighting - this is the difference between low key lighting and high key lighting. High key lighting is usually used in fashion magazines and beauty magazines to emphasize someone's beauty whereas low key lighting would be in adverts trying to create a mysterious, scary atmosphere like a poster for a horror movie.

Post production - this deals with everything after you've taken the photo such as editing, and resizing

We also attempted to replicate a professional photo and experiment with the lighting and composition of our volunteer to see how to take a professional photo.

Mood Board with Pictures

These images in the mood board are things popular for our target audience. There are musicians of good talent like VV Brown for our older target audience of around 16-18 and then popular disney stars and musicians for the younger target audience. The image of the dress relates to both ends of the spectrum of our target audience.

Costume Analysis

Bright pyjamas top, pink leg warmers

We chose to use a bright top that would stand out to our viewers. It is colourful and represents her African culture therefore we can widen the girls we are trying to reach to in our target audience. The leg warmers are pink and bright. Pink represents the theme we are tying to get across.It represents the casual and relaxed nature of our singer.

Black dress with high heels

The black dress represents the other side of our singer. Even though she's bubbly at home with her pyjamas the dress makes her more sophisticated and mature. This also relates to our target audience because we find young girls love to try and dress older and experiment with make up. That is why we showed our singer attempting to put on lipstick because she was trying to look the part. In the older spectrum of our target audience this outfit appeals to them because they can always relate to going out with their friends dressing up and having a fun time at a low key concert

The colour 'black' of the dress represents her trying to be elegant and older as well. Her high heels as well as them being pink to represent our theme it shows her step towards adulthood. Aswell as the silver jewellery it shows the artistic side of her as she is pursuing her music career so she wants to look the part

Ideas for Digipak

A digipak is usually a 4 or 6 sided spread for a music album.
Our original idea was to have a medium shot of our singer and merge her two lifestyles into one picture.

This would take up one side of the Digipak




This picture is a close up of our singers face. As you can see, it features her in her performative outfit with big hair, earings, lipstick, and also her normal lifestyle, simply in her pyjamas. We plan to merge this into one picture and feature it on a page on our digipak

The rest of the pages in our digipak we would put pictures of the props we see in the music video such as her shoes, legwarmers, microphone, and scarf.

On one page, possibly at the back page,
we would include the list of songs that feature on the album.

Photo Shoot Plan

People needed - Debbie the Singer

Costume needed - Two outfit changes
1) Bright coloured pyjamas
pink leg warmers
black tights

2) Black dress
silver necklaces and earrings
scarf
pink high heels

Props - pink radio, microphone, lipstick

Lighting - High key lighting if possible, with soft pink filler lights in the background

Location - TV studio and a house

Analysis of Digipaks

Digipak

Conventions of a Music Video

Todorov Theory

Location Analysis

This is an image of the staircase taken in the house where our artist performs. We believe that the staircase was the best place for our artist to show her performative side as it is a common location in a lot of media for an artist/actor to perform for instance in the 1986's movie Ferris Beuller's Day Off, Ferris performs amateurish on his stairs and house. Therefore since it is a popular media convention it goes well with our video



This is the location of our artists bedroom. We chose this location as part of our establishing shot because it denotes that this is the beginning of the music video because it is a comfortable setting and now the audience will automatically associate our artist as a reserved artist because of the simplicity of the opening location



This image is taken from the TV studio. This is the place where the concert takes place because of the equipment the TV studio has it is effective in creating realistic lighting that you would see in a small concert/gig.

Training with Final Cut Pro

On this day we had a tutorial on how to use Final Cut Pro which is a software for editing material such as music video available on Apple Computers.

We learnt the basics first:
Alt+X allowed you to get rid of the 'in' and 'out' buttons when you're selecting footage

Apple+Z allowed us to undo

Apple+shift+z allowed us to redo

By pressing the space button on the time line while our music track was playing green marks would appear. This helped us for when we were creating cuts to the beat of the song so we were able to achieve on beat editing.

We learnt about Effects, video transitions, colour corrections, and filtering

Other Ideas and Inspirations

Hannah montana

View more presentations from polag.

Representation of women

Since our music video predominatley is focused on a female we can apply Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze to our video. She states that women are reduced to inanimate objects in film. She also says in film cameras will focus on the curves of a woman this is usually through the perspective of males. However I think because we are targeting a specific target audience of about 11-18 year old girls we are empowering young girs by our artist. In our camera work we did not focus on things like the curves of a woman because we wanted to stay away from the accepted ideology of portray women in a sexual way. However we portray Debbie in a fun jokingly matter so it can appeal to our target audience

Sixth Shooting

This was the last shooting in the tv studio of the drummer and singer though again due to lighting difficulties we will probably reshoot because the quality was not that great

Locations and Prop list

After brainstorming our ideas we had a better idea as to where we were going to shoot our music video.

Locations
A regular house
TV studio which would represent a concert setting

Props
Mirror
Comb
Lipstick
Radio
Grapes
Drums
Microphone

Costume
Black dress
Pink High Heels
Bright pyjamas
Glittery Jewellery
Reading glasses
Hair piece
Bangles

Fifth Shooting

In this scene we were re-shooting the beginning of our music video because of the bad quality we had produced. These scenes were when our singer was just getting up from bed and when she puts the radio on.

Fourth Shooting

Today we were shooting in the TV studio so this meant we had to set up our lighting. We were also shooting with the gel lights. Overall we had minimal difficulties conveying what we wanted

Questionnaire towards our Target Audience

Because our target audience is young we aren't able to post any visual photos of their responses to our questions.

Here are the list of questions I asked my target audience

Crystal, 10

How old are you? 10

Do you like music? Sometimes

When you watch music videos, what are the things you like to see? Well I don't really like watching music videos but I like dancing and I usually like singers but the girl singers.

What is your favourite type of music? music like Katy Perry sings

(when we described the concept of our music video towards our interviewee we asked for her opinion) - It sounds like fun music video, and I like the song Valerie and your video kinda reminds me of Hannah Montana because the singer sounds like her.

What are your favourite movies? I have a lot like Twitches, Karate Kid

From this interview I was able to get an idea of the type of area we would aim our video towards such as Disney because Hannah Montana, Twitches, are all part of the pop culture of young children that they like.






Towards our older spectrum of our target audience I conducted a video interview and asked the same questions towards our interviewee. From her answers it helped us define what exactly we wanted our music video to include.

Third shooting

Today we shot the scene where our artist spins around and her outfit changes. This required a lot of precision because our artist had to stay in the same spot while we swopped outfits so we would achieve continuinity