Justification of Album Names

On the back of our album we have created various names for different songs which would be available to the customer. The track list is currently listed as:

1. All The Small Things
2. A Tsunami is For Life
3. Antagonism doesn't give a S**t
4. Smile Like You Mean It (Cover)
5. The Other Side of Spiritiualism
6. Day of Lust
7. Realism has Got You By The Balls
8. You Stole my Lazer
9. Fist Full of Predictions
10. The Future of Mr. Earl
11. Psychedelic Pug

These track listings are completely made up through our imagination. Aside from All The Small Things and Smile Like You Mean It none of the track listings are actual songs. We made up the names in order to make the album more unique which would link towards the fact that it is an actual album and not simply an album full of cover songs. The names we chose for the songs are actually scarcely linked towards the names of other songs other songs by real musicians. Even though Infant Sorrow is a fictional band they have still released an album for the soundtrack to the film Get Him To The Greek. In this, the band is made in order to paradoy the conventions of typical modern pop and rock songs by using lyrics which are very foolish in order to be comedic. One of these songs happens to be called Gang of Lust which is clearly similar to Day of Lust (listed above). Although it is made in order to be 'over the top' and silly it is still a song released by what can be classed as an alternative rock band and the fact that it is trying to stay true to what modern rock songs are like except the lyrics and structure of the song itself is very silly. Moreover the singer known as Frank Turner has numerous songs which have names that could link towards the names like Antagonism Doesn't Give A S**t" and The Other Side of Spiritualism such as the song We Were Once Anarchists which has numerous examples of swearing and being provacative towards political or social ideology. More surreal names for songs such as Psychedelic Pug and The Future of Mr. Earl are influenced by songs such as Jigsaw Falling Into Place by Radiohead or Five Colours in Her Hair by McFly since the names of these do not primarily fit in terms of typical song titles.

Justifying no Text on The Album Cover

With our album cover we decided that it would be best suited if we chose to not have any text on the front cover. The reason for this is because I feel as though it helps keep the artistic value of the image and having text covering the album may restrict the artistic merit of the image we have created. Moreover it is not a direct convention of alternative rock music however examples of albums which do not have any text printed on the front cover can clearly be seen. One of the most famous examples would be Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon. In this album cover there is no text whatsoever, instead the image of a prism along with a rainbow type feature coming out of it is just seen. This keeps the artistic merit of the image which is the same concept we are attempting to have within our album cover. By having this example we can justify that alternative rock can sometimes put artistic merit over what is potentially more marketable by having text.

Album Back Cover

Within the back of our album we decided that it would far easier to conform to the iconography of the alternative rock genre by taking example from other back covers of alternative rock albums. Due to the diversity of alternative rock covers it is very difficult to identify a specific characteristic which appears in all of the covers. However it is clear that a specific characteristic of the covers is that they always reflect or have a clear reflection in someway of the same image shown on the front cover. In terms of our album cover we have a very abstract shape which cannot directly be reflected in the same way an actual image can be such as in Definitely Maybe. In this the same setting used in the front of the cover is used on the back however the people who are in the image have changed position, namely one person who in the front cover is sitting on the left side playing a guitar on a couch whilst in the back cover he has changed to standing up on the right side. This would make room on the left side so that text can be implemented to identify the track listings. Similarly in The Killers Day and Age album it appears that the same artistic 'look' of the front cover is reflected on the back cover but with subtle changes such as having an image which seems to represent a moon in the front cover which then disappears when looked at the back cover. Other than this there are virtually no changes.

This meant that we needed to keep the same artistic 'look' of the front cover on the back cover. We decided that, like Definitely Maybe, we needed to keep the same image but subvert it slightly in order to make it different from the front cover and to make room to list the different tracks which would be available in the album. Subsequently we took the image we used on the front cover, changed the colour of it slightly and then decreased the size and placed it in the top corner of the album. This gave us room to list the different tracks. We used exactly the same front and colour to list the tracks from what we used to write "Tweeda" on the poster in order to maintain consistency. Legally we could say from an array of back covers that there would have to be various logos and statements which would make the album legally secure. This meant that we needed to implement a studio as well as the fact that it was a compact disc, a bar code and a legal statement stating it's copyright infringements.

Within our back cover we also thought it would be a good idea to stay 'hip' and include a QR code which can be scanned by anyone with a phone. When scanned using an iPhone application or otherwise then it will appear with the words "Tweeda say buy this album". This is not directly linked towards a specific cover in particular from our research however we did feel as though it is a little something extra which would help with appealing to a younger audience and it may in fact be a piece of technology which will start to appear in more album covers in the future as a way of being more 'hip' and modern with the use of new technology. To prove that the QR code does in fact say "Tweeda say buy this album" I have taken a print screen with my phone using the application called QRReader which I made me use the camera on my phone to read the code shown on the back of the album and the result is clearly shown.

Poster Text

Tweeda


Here is the text we decided to implement within our posters for Tweeda. This text is overall very bold and colourful. We decided to use this for the poster of our album. There is no font on our album cover since we feel that the band would take artistic license and not feature the name of the band in order to appeal more artistic. This font is known as Bauhaus 93 and at the current stage is unlikely to change (since we feel our posters have been finalized). There is still a possibility that this font can change however currently it seems very unlikely. The colour is something we thought about intently. Pink is a colour which is typically associated with girls. Due to alternative rock bands like McFly it seems very appropriate to link to a target audience of girls in someway. This does not mean that our band would purely be devoted to girls since our album cover, video and album poster do not directly link towards girls at all, however we felt that we should try to include some typical conventions of teenage girl interests in order to indicate that we have induced thought to the colour of our text. Moreover this text can simply appeal to boys as well. Since the album cover is very colourful and stylized it makes perfect sense to have text which would follow suit, the fact that it is pink can appear irrelevant to some people when taking into context the fact that the album and album poster include a mass array of different colours.

Rejected Album Covers

Here are some of the rejected album covers which were made with the original intention of using them as the final album cover. However over time the development of the spherical shape was deemed to be a much more reliable choice to choose as the final album cover because it clearly fit the conventions and could link towards other album covers made for alternative rock genre. These images certainly link more directly towards the video since the concept and themes of the video including drugs, sex and alcohol. However after looking through some album cover of actual alternative rock albums it appears that a direct link to the video is not necessary and actually be separating ourselves from the video in the print products would strangely allow us to link more to the iconography of alternative rock albums than if we did link directly. Overall however, we do still very much like these images. Indeed we like them so much that we have decided that our digi-pack will feature each of these images and probably more on different pages which can link to different songs. This will mean that we do not need to simply cast these images aside and we can allow ourselves to in-cooperate some aspects of the video within our digi-pack.

Final Album Cover

 Here is the image of the final album cover which we have chosen (final image). This has been chosen after we thought that it managed to conform to the conventions of other alternative rock album covers. This abstract, spherical shape is clearly quite unique at first sight however as you can see it has clearly had some sort of influence from albums such as The Resistance by Muse and The Enemy's album Music For The People. This influence can clearly be seen after looking at all 3 images one after the other. It is very artistic and diverse but I feel the same structure of the shape has been emulated. The range of colours does not directly link towards the video and neither does the actual shape itself link to any part of the video at all. However this is exactly the same scenario made within The Resistance, at no point in the video for Uprising (the biggest selling single from the album) is there any link towards the shape shown on the album cover. This makes the album appear separated from the video however since this the same scenario with The Resistance then it makes it clear that our album should take on a more artistic and stylized look whilst our video can be essentially something which is not directly linked. This album was made by using the software Photoshop and was made after creating a Lens Flare which was then had the contrast adjusted to a very high setting, then the hue was altered to make the colour more vibrant and add the specified colours we wanted. After that Sean added application known as 'Glowing Edges' just before adding a blur filter that creates the spherical effect. Adding a watercolour filter was then applied after all this in order to create the desired effect which all assisted with the effect created in the final album cover which can be seen in the final image of this post.

Posters

After scouring through multiple posters which link towards bands of different alternative rock music me, Sean and Katie made the conclusion of how the poster should be set out. First of all due to influence such as Stereophonics we decided that it would be best to use the same image used within our album cover. This image will be exactly the same as the album cover however it will differ in terms of positioning in order to adhere to the fact that it is a poster rather than an album cover. The differences between the album cover and the poster include a set date of when the album will be released, this is taken from influence such as Oasis with  What's The Story Morning Glory in which the name of the band and the date of the album release is the only text shown. In our poster (pictured in the second final and final image) for Tweeda we in-cooperated this idea. Specifically in the final image we would have this poster as the ideal poster the band would choose to have since it is more simple and is not explicitly covered in reviews or anything that would have had an external view of the band. In order to keep up to date with modern technology we looked at posters such as Keep Calm and Carry On by Stereophonics which features a website dedicated to the band at the bottom of the poster we also decided to use this in order to conform to the iconography of alternative rock music.

In the end we have created two posters, the one shown in the final image would be the one which conforms mostly to the iconography of alternative rock music since it fits with all the iconography just listed. However if this were a real band then it would be highly likely that when the poster is featured in a magazine then either the magazine itself or the record label would choose to feature reviews from multiple magazines which delegate themselves to the genre such as NME or Kerrang!. The difference the reviewed poster has in contrast with the poster the band would idealistically choose would be that it not only features reviews from magazines.

it also features links to websites where more information can be found about the band. Namely, Facebook and Twitter are social networking sites which specifically target teenagers (our target audience) and featuring this in the poster for the album may help impact the sales since customers can buy the product and then search for more information regarding the band such as news updates on concerts, new albums or singles, etc. Moreover, information such as the fact that it feature the "no 1 hit All The Small Things" would appeal to a wider audience (which would be the record label's main aim) since customers will recognize the single and thereby will recognize the band.

Retrospective - Comparing Decipher to All The Small Things

With both Katie and Sean off today I decided that this would be a good time to start a retrospective blog entry. So far, we have accumlinated a vareity of different knowledge from our research and attempted to implement them into our project as much as possible. We have essentially completed the video now and the print products are underway. In comparison to the preperation for Decipher (which I made at my AS level) I feel that my research and preperation is roughly similar, in the sense that I cannot clearly state that my research for Decipher was more thorough than the other, this is the same for the preperation aspect. Research is an aspect I feel I completed in a large amount of detail for each project. I knew immediately for Decipher which opening sequences of film I should have looked at and my analysis was as detailed as I could possibly make it. Similarly I did this with All The Small Things since I knew that I wanted to create a video based around alternative rock from the start and since I am a fan of the genre I could instantly decipher which videos would be best for me to look at which could provide influence for me within my project. I attempted to get a full understanding of the general charaterstics of the videos including specific shots, themes, narrative focus as well as general attitude and who the video is trying to appeal too. The research for Decipher indicated to me that I needed to implement the idea of crime and a very atmospheric feel in order to link in towards film noir. When researching All The Small Things I discovered that with videos such as Numb the idea of teenagers rebelling is a prominant theme, with other videos such as Uprising the idea of rebellion is even more prevalent, then after videos such as Damages the idea of drugs and alcohol and sex comes into more focus. I thereby knew that these should be themes that would have to be based on within our video.

However I think in terms of filming and the preperation made in order to film the video then the preperation for All The Small Things was much better than Decipher. When filming Decipher we understood the shots we wanted to make and understood the locations where we gonna film. Although the actual execution was improvised to some extent. For instance, the effect the light made when it was placed behind me in Decipher to mask my face was almost discovered entirely by luck when one of the members of the group turned the light over and it happened to display the effect that was eventually seen in the video. We wanted to create the effect from the start but only discovered how to do the effect on the day of filming. If it hadn't been for luck then the effect would not have been made as successfully as it appeared in the video (or at least would not have appeared as effective naturally without editing techniques). Luck was not directly needed when we filmed All The Small Things, we had a much clear understanding of what we were gonna film and how this was gonna be acheived for each shot. We did have some complications at the start with the narrative sequence since we could not decide on whereabouts in the location we should film. However in terms of how to acheive certain shots there was no issue whatsoever. I feel as though this clearly shows how we learnt our lesson from Decipher and that luck should not be something to rely on when filming. Other aspects that were improved on includes the preperation in terms of equipment and props. When filming Decipher disaster struck when filming a sequence in a tunnel, the batteryof the camera ran out before we finished filming all of our shots which meant that a large amount of artistic integrity was lost and the vareity we had when editing was very narrow which was diaspointing. The reason the battery ran out was notably not because we spent time filming, it was because the person who had posession of the camera the previous night forgot to charge it, this meant that we only filmed certain parts and needed to edit around the video in order to conjure up the narrative as best as possible. For All The Small Things, we were able to use Katie's new photography camera which has a much clearer picture quality and also in the end, there were absolutly no issues with regards to using too much memory or needing to charge the battery. This meant that we were far more prepared when filming the sequence and we could even spend time on some shots that weren't orignally planned but we still had time to do (as a kind-of test), some of which eventually appeared in the video such as when the characters are on drugs there is a close up of their face as the room spins around. This was not planned but was able to be acheived purely because we had such a vast amount of time left to do whatever we wanted. In prepreation I managed to create a storyboard which was not necessarily referred to whilst filming however it did clearly indicate to the rest of the group the 'look' and shots the video would have had to have. Even though there was a storyboard made last year I feel as though it was less developed in the sense that it did show how parts of the video would be set up but didn't directly show narrative focus on specific shots that needed to be done at certain points.

The print products are parts which were not made last year at all, even though the text credits and studio logo needed to be made they were far less developed and detailed as the actual products made for All The Small Things, for instance in the All The Small Things poster the concept of text positioning and how appropriate the 'look' of the product is much more detailed than the text in Decipher, in Decipher the text was simply made as black and white with a few editing effects to make it link to the video and research, whereas in All The Small Things we had to create  a picture as well as actually think about what font to use (this was considered in Decipher but no was no where near as strenous to discover). Overall I feel as though the majority of the prepation done for All The Small Things was far more organized and detailed than what was done for Decipher. The fact that there were no techinical issues when filming and that we could implement as many different shots as we'd like indicates that we were clearly more organized when filming and were satisfied each time we left from each day of filming. Although I do feel my research in comparison to Decipher is fairly level, I don't believe I have specifically done any more or any less than what I did last year which I don't feel is directly a negative since they both allowed me to discover exactly what conventions I needed to include and what needed to be included in order to make the video conform to the conventions of the genre of alternative rock.