2. HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE
COMBINATION OF YOUR
MUSIC VIDEO AND THE
DIGIPAK AND MAGAZINE
RESEARCH?
BY ELIJAH PANTINO
What we aimed to give off from the combination of our music video, digpak, and magazine advert is the sense of loneliness, which also compliments the song we used. Throughout all three, we have a recurring theme of big spaces and concentrating on just one person. The band we used, although better known for the passive aggressive and in-your-face and energetic tone in most of their songs, allowed us the opportunity to show them in a different light through our music video because of the different tone and style they did their song Clairvoyant, which is the song we used for our music video. We have repeatedly used pictures of streetlights at night in our digipak and magazine advert again helping convey loneliness and sadness. The feelings of loneliness and sadness are quite closely linked with the acoustic genre as the tone and melodies used in most acoustic songs are quite mellow and calm. We believe that the pictures of streetlights at night strongly convey these feelings and moods, which is what we aimed for when we were designing our digipak and magazine advert and filming in open spaces whilst concentrating on just one subject also helps reinforce loneliness, sadness, and also helplessness.
Concerning our digipak, we have been told to take out the
black spine and just integrate the back cover and the inside
cover into it to have a more flowing appearance. We have
also been told that the front cover of our digipak has a lot of
“dead space” in it. We can also justify this by comparing our
digipak front cover to other digipak front covers of bands in
the same genre. Transit’s Listen & Forgive, Yellowcard’s
When You’re Through Thinking Say Yes, Fireworks’ Gospel,
Major League’s Variables, Man Overboard’s Before We Met,
Real Friends’ Acoustic Songs, State Champs’ The Finer
Things, Into It. Over It.’s Proper, and Balance & Composure’s
Separation all follow the convention of keeping the front
cover simple and usually only having a simple picture as the
front cover and their band logo. We kept the convention of
keeping the front cover simple, and we initially chose to have
a picture as our front cover, like the albums stated above, but
chose to have some hand drawn text instead. I am in the
process of including the changes we were told to do to help
increase our grade.
Concerning our magazine advert, we were told to make the
size of our digipak front cover smaller. In our defence, we
think that the advert is fine enough and I even followed the
layout of another band’s magazine advert from the same
genre. I have followed these suggestions when I was
modifying our magazine advert and I have made the size of
the front cover and the text smaller compared to the original
and I personally feel that it looks much better because it
looks more “balanced” and the front cover and the text are
“invading” less space in the picture and I believe it just looks
better in general.