Digipak
Initially, our group was going to use the image below as the frontcover of our Digipak. After advice from Media teachers, however, we decided to instead use the image for a different purpose. As previously stated, the image was perfect for a frontcover and it covered every convention that "Hip-Hop" should have such as it's main focus on the band themselves and the contrast of lighting to enhance the image. So, why didn't we use it?
If we went ahead and used the image for the frontcover, we were advised it would look too much like a "single", not an album. Obviously, the intention of the Digipak is to incorporate different features into a single concept. The image didn't fit the critera as it presented much like a single CD rather than an album. Instead, we have edited the image and have used it as a poster of which we have all signed our names. This will now be included within the Digipak as a bonus-feature instead of a front cover.
Afterwards, we faced a dilemma of deciding what should be our front-cover for our Digipak. We only have two more full lessons for the completition of our promonitonal-pack so time isn't on our side yet we are optimistic that we can complete the package in time. For our frontcover, we have now decided to get new images - simular to our previous image which we were going to use - but this time, we will be taking the image infront of a green-screen so that we can "cut" our image away from the location we're in and add another image of our choosing. We were thinking to include an image of New York City with us in front of it, or perhaps Las Vagus in all its glory. We previously researched different album covers for JLS, and to our suprise quite a few of them were infront of a large city or something simular. As we are amplifying JLS and their style, we are hoping to do something simular.
For the backcover of our Digipak, our group came up with the idea that we could perhaps include a vast number of different images of us within a singular image. In effect, we would have several images of our bandmembers within a single JLS logo - or something to that effect. Obviously we would have to also keep the conventions of a Digipak intact as well has conveying the conventions from the "Hip-Hop" genre. We may even possibly use this idea for another poster. Within the digipak, I've touched upon only two features which will be featured within our production, yet we have ideas for another 2 or 3. Our first is a "competition" in which members of the public can meet JLS themselves, there will be a simple picture of the bandmembers, perhaps holding up a sign with the bold letters of "COMPETITION" to grab our audiences' attention. A second feature will be lyrics to a specific song that our audience can attain. This would, in theory, be pretty easy to do. However, there may not be enough space to write each lyric so this idea is still on the table.
Whilst we have many ideas, time still work against us - therefore work will have to be done outside college time to construct our work. We are hopeful that our production will be highly successful, however, and we have great hopes for the final version of our Digipak.
Our Video
As previously stated, we lost all of our footage after a full day of recording. Fortuantely, we were able to record again and get the footage we needed - if not better footage.
The loss of our work may have been a blessing in disguise as we believe we created a better video from the experience of filming before hand. Our locations differed from the first, we ditched the location of a "street" and instead included a "tunnel" - as noticable from the video, we believe we emphasise the conventions of "Hip-Hop" a great deal more than we did within the street. We also knew the time and the problems concerning each location in advance, so nothing suprised us on filming day - such as the constant apperance of the public in our shots.
Unfortuantely, it did come with some setbacks. The first being that our initial idea of a subline-story was ditched. We didn't have a single female actor within our piece as we couldn't get the time to find anyone suitable. We were hoping to include a female character so that the visuals match the lyrics in some areas, as Goodwin's theory suggests we should do. Obviously we was not able to do this, though we found that our video was just as successful without the female characters than with them. After watching numerous videos from JLS, whilst most do have females to increase voyeurism, every video focuses intently on JLS themselves - we have therefore based most, if not all of our shots on the band-members themselves. We haven't put Goodwin's theory to one side, though, as we incorporated all of his features within our video in one way or another.
