Photoshop; Creating The Front Cover

To create my front cover I started with the artist name and put it at the top. I decided to use a similar font to 'The Specials' ..

I then put in the crowd silhouettes that I created and just changed the outer glow between blue and a purple.

I then added a picture of the main singer form the band as there is already alot going on the cover so i decided to focus on the main singer from the band. it also goes against the conventions of Ska genre as the whole bad in normally shown on the album covers.

I then finished by adding the album title and for this used a different font as the first one i used ... is boring and thereofre doesnt get the idea across, so i chose a swiggly looking font for the ablum title called ...

Photoshop; Creating The Crowd

To create the background for my front and back cover of the DVD, I first took pictures of someone and used the magic wand and altered the tolerance, so that I could get rid of the background. I also used magnetic lasso to get a closer edge to the person to help create the prefect silhouette.

I then used a colour overlay effect, at a opacity of 100% and changed the colour to black to create a silhouette.

I then repeated this for a number of pictures, then free transformed them to be smaller and then copied them all onto a new sheet and then arranged the pictures to look like a crowd.

To finish it off I added a glow individually around each picture using the outer glow effect, on screen at 49% spread, I used a glow to make the crowd stand out as I wanted it to go on a black background to look like it was night and dark. I also chose a black background and dark blue's and purple was so that I can put a contrasting bright colour around the band. The bright colour is to resemble the madness of 'The Madettes'.

Research; Ska Covers; No Doubt

No Doubt is a modern version of Ska, they started in 1986 - present and during their career the band has won two Grammy Awards and has had sold 28 million records worldwide. The band broke traditional conventions of Ska as they entered the Ska Pop genre making they version of Ska more commercial. No Doubt also went against the checkered theme that Ska bands such as The Specials and The Selector, even the Ska ..albums used checkers on them.

This single cover that No Doubt has done places its main focus on Gwen Stefani the lad vocalist but they still hold on to the random element of Ska genre as Gwen is holding an orange, which doesn't link in with anything.

The other people on the cover are used to reinforce the song name 'Don't Speak'. However the people are shown speaking which can also relate to them going against the conventions.

The album cover also doesn't include checkers, and doesn't show any of the band members on the cover.

Also looking at a few other of their album covers you can see that the album covers have been influenced by the style of music they have been inspired by for the songs within the album, such as New wave, Dance Pop, Reggae and Dancehall.

Research; Ska Covers

The album cover that i am going to textually analyse is The Speicals 1st album, as i am doing a debut compliation album for my band the madettes. This albu follows all conventions of Ska which are the black and white theme, a simple front cover as it only consists of just a white background and a picture of the band taken fom birds eye, which i plan to incorporate within my album. The band is also wearning sunglasses as the form of Ska came under New Wave and incorporated forms of mob-subculture, The band had begun wearing mod/rude boy/skinhead style two-tone tonic suits, along with other elements of late 1960s teen fashions.

The album however dosesn't follow album cover convetnions such as the song titles being on the back cover, as they are on the front as well as the record label. The album also includes simple font, and the song list suggests that it is amied at a more mature auience that the style of audience that i am going for with my band.

Research; Ska Covers

The first Ska album I decided to analyse, when researching into how I should do my album cover was 'The Sound of Ska'. I decided to analyse this album because it is an compilation album and therefore had to create an overall images for all of Ska. Just by looking at the album you can tell that black and white is a clear convention. I personally like the way that they use the checkers on the album as it is just at the side, therefore not dominating the album but still something that you notice and will remember from the album, which they have followed on to the back cover with the line of checkers used to divide the songs and the institutional information. However this album is quite boring and has nothing that draws you to it as it is only black and white, therefore I would like my cover to be colourful to go against the conventions, but still to include conventions like the checker idea.

Re Do Of Cover Plan

I decided to change my cover plan as i felt it didn't link in with my music video or magazine ad enough and also wouldn't appeal to my target audience, so i drew upon the ideas that i had used on my magazine ad, making the cover more colourful and bright.

Inside Cover Plan

Inside Plan

Front Cover Plan

Record Label Choice

For my ancillary tasks i had to look into a record label for my band and for this i decided to choose Island Record label as it has artists like VV Brown on it, who i feel is a mordern day style of the Ska genre. I also decided to choose this label because the types of other artists on there appeal to the same target audience that i am aiming for such as the Sugababes, Justin Bieber and Rihanna.

Cover Research -- Jay Z

During lesson we textually analysed Jay Z's most recent album cover 'The Blueprint 3' (shown on the left). We also looked at his previous album covers, to look at how his career focus changed, with his picture being in the for front or him being the main focus, to his most recent one, where he took it back to him being about the music, and how

music is a form of art.

Looking into his album covers we saw how is the centre of attention, as that is how new artists start out, were the record label decides everything, were they used Jay Z's genre of Hip Hop and the Thug look, and close ups of him.

The close ups and Thuggish look makes to audience feel intimidated by him, but as Jay Z became more successful in his music career he came to have more say in the what he did and made it more about the music than him shown in the first picture of his most recent album cover.

Jay Z over time has become more noticed for his music than him, and has become a producer in his own right for himself and other artists. he has also collaborated with artists outside of his genre like; Linkin Park, showing that any genre can produce great music together as it is about the music and not the artist them self. Using Jay Z as a influence I want my band cover image to be more about the music, the artist is creating.

Editing;

In this session myself and Sam uploaded our footage began to edit the footage on Final Cut, using split screen again but with 3 screens a main one and to smaller ones.

On one of the small screens I used the clip were I run up to the camera and wave then run back, on this clip I added an echo effect which made it look mad as it left a trail. I then made the screen get bigger on the beat of the music, till it took over the whole screen, this added to the 'mad' idea and also keeps the audiences attention as the screen keeps changing.

Filming;

In a previous session we decided that we needed more clips of our artist, doing something mad to relate to the band name 'The Madettes'. For this filming session I decided that I would wear odd socks as it added to the 'mad' theme that we were going for.

So we decided to film the main artist (myself), first we decided to use a tripod and film me dancing on the tables, we thought this would b a good place as the classroom still relates to the school theme and dancing on tables is something that a pupil would not be doing. Sam then held to camera at low angle, were I ran up to the camera and waved at it, this makes the audience feel involved. We filmed me dancing several times were I did different 'funny' dance moves which a mature audience member can relate to and younger audience might laugh at.

Editing;

As a group we decided to add effects to our music video, to make it more appealing to a younger audience, whilst the choice of song appealed to a more mature audience. You use of colours and effects also relates to our band name of 'The Madettes'.

This music video breaks the conventions of Ska through the use of colour, as we have a moving colour sequence in our video which we did on Final Cut using the colour corrector tool. We also used a super imposition tool over me singing, to modernise our genre for today's audience.

Editing;

In this lesson we began to edit the second chorus within the song and for this we decided to use a split screen, showing four different clips at the same time.

This allows us to continue our theme of squares within the music video, as this would make it more interesting for the audience watching the video as it gives them choice of what to look at. This idea was also used in a Ska music video by The Selector.