Album Cover
Introduction
For this project I will be producing my own album cover artwork and also creating a music video based on a song of my own choice. I will be undertaking research into some media theories and the media sector in general before doing the practical side of the project brief. For this I will be doing the media phases of pre-production, production and post production.
History of the album cover
The idea of having an image on a album was not thought of till 1930 when designers such as Alex Steinweiss realised that having illustrated covers resulted in a huge increase in sales which was a big change from just a blank album cover which is ,at the time, what people saw as the norm. Alex Steinweiss was born on March 24, 1917, in Brooklyn. His father was a women's shoe designer from Warsaw and his mother was a seamstress from Riga, Latvia. They moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan and eventually settled in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. In 1998, Steinweiss was inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame.
Sometimes it was just bold use of typography instead of a piece of art work or photography, for example in Reid Miles’s design for Jackie McLean’s It’s Time that produced a simple yet eye-catching cover which consisted of just text.
The idea of having an image to further sell an album was ripe for artistic experimentation and ultimately led to covers such as The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers where they added a zip onto the album to create a more unique look. (pictured above)
Lighting styles
Rembrandt ("Rembrandt patch")
Rembrandt lighting is a lighting technique named after a 15th century Dutch artist who used this technique in a lot of his own artwork. To properly achieve this style you must have one side of the subject lit while at the same time leaving just a triangle of light under the eye where its all dark and shaded. This is done by having the light placed high above and to one side at the front. If done correctly this style of lighting can make an image look dramatic.
Butterfly
Butterfly lighting is a lighting style used in photography where the key light is placed above and pointing down on the subject’s face. This creates a dramatic shadow under the nose and chin that looks like a butterfly.
Butterfly lighting is perfect for portrait photography. It is one of the most flattering lighting techniques for sculpting facial features. It's also called 'Paramount lighting,' named for the Hollywood studio and how they lit their actresses.
Short
Short light is type of studio lighting style, where the face side which is further from the camera gets the main light. In this type of lighting setup, the side of the face which is toward the camera gets less light than the side facing away form the camera. When you choose to light the short side of the face first, it also has several effects on your portraits such as Short lighting narrows the face, throw the broad side of the face in shadow, provides heavy contrast and is ideal for low-key images and It is also useful when you are trying to create images with a lot of depth.
Lighting Equipment
A Soft Box is used for softening and increasing the size of a smaller light source. It controls the shape and direction of light more than an umbrella and prevents more light-spill from occurring which helps in creating higher quality light.
A snoot is a tube or similar object that fits over a studio light or portable flash and allows the photographer to control the direction and radius of the light beam.
Light Meters can measure the amount of light falling on a subject or being reflected by a subject. By converting these measurements, it shows what would be the most beneficial shutter speed and aperture to use for that given subject.
Lighting Workshop
These are our attempts of images that could potentially be used in our own album covers. In groups in the photography studio we used a mannequin to test the different light styles in the studio using the different lighting equipment we have, such as the soft box and the snoot to capture different techniques.
To add something different to our studio photos we also experimented with gels attached to our background lights. This meant that we were able to change the colour of our background to help further show the mood and theme of the picture we were taking as the colour in the light can be widely changed as well as as how much colour we wanted in our backgrounds. We discovered the opportunities were endless.
I enjoyed this workshop as it helped me understand the kind of lighting I can use and how to achieve them, as well as this I feel it was a good opportunity to experiment and decide if its what I want to include in my final version of my completed album cover.
Green screen
In the planning process of my music video and album cover I took the time to experiment different ways in which I could create a interesting and technical way of making my ideas come to life. And with that in mind I learned how to use a green screen from shooting some footage and putting it through Adobe premier pro so that my creative options and opportunities were more broad.
To achieve this effect I put a short clip of a person I recorded In front of a green screen into premier pro and got stock footage of a beach just as an example for a background. Then in the editor I used the eye dropper tool to locate the green in the background of the video so that it is removed and transparent. I was then able to take it a step further by going into the "matte generation" and "matte cleanup" menus to make the green screen video seem cleaner and more realistic when places over another clip.
Creating my Album Cover
My Inspiration
To begin planning my album cover I decided that my first step would be looking at the genre of my chosen song and what kind of album covers they had. After narrowing my favorite ones down to four I decided to take inspiration from them and have my main focus be of a urban aesthetic and have things like modern buildings or structures center of my album cover along with text that also fits my chosen theme.
Raw / Unedited shots
After doing my research I then went out with a DSLR camera and shot things I thought fit into an urban theme for my album cover. After a while of taking pictures I took a liking to the idea of having the bus stop as the main focus point as it resembled the one I kept as inspiration by the band streets called "a grand don't come for free" where it pictured a wide shot of a bus stop at night with a man sat at it alone.
Edited via Light room
I then put a few of the bus stop images through light room to further enhance the images, giving them a cleaner look. And after experimenting with a few presents and settings used the cinematic present titled "CN08" as It brought out the yellow in the bus stop as well as give off the urban look that I wanted to achieve.
Canva
I then wanted to add images and text to my album cover so I used Canva. Canva is a graphic design platform which can be used to create anything from advertisements to graphics for social media pages and have a wide variety of presents and graphics which I used to my advantage in creating my album cover. For the text I got individual images of letters with different styles and added them together almost like a collage to make the title of the music video above the bus stop.
Final Design - Completed Album cover
Here above is my official "No Buses" completed album cover complete with the image edited using light room and with text and logo from the website, Canva. This fits well with my song choice as the album image shows a bus stop which is a reference the the song title and the meaning behind the song which is described by the artist as the following:
"They always offer when there's loads of love around, but when you're short of some, its nowhere to be found"- Just like public buses, you see lots of them when you don't need one. But as soon as you need one, they all just seem to disappear.
Audience Theory
Hypodermic Needle Theory
The Hypodermic Needle Theory is a communication theory that suggests that the media has a powerful influence on its targeted audience, which explains why it has the name "Hypodermic needle" as the information is As if it is being literally
injected into the audience.
This theory was developed in the 1920s and 1930s after researchers observed the effect of propaganda during World War I and became the dominant way of thinking about media influence during the following decades.
An example of this theory taking place was in 1938 when American director, Orson Welles was hugely mistaken by the gullible public leading terrified listeners to believe that Earth was under attack by hostile aliens. This report was obviously fake but due to the lack of regular flowing media people had no other source of receiving news other than through a newspaper or on a radio broadcast so to hear this being reported on the radio without any other sort of context caused major panic amongst listeners. When it was in fact audio recorded for "The War of the Worlds," and was part of a weekly series of dramatic broadcasts created in collaboration with the Mercury Theatre on the Air for CBS.
Gratification Theory
The Gratification Theory is more centered towards what people do with media instead how it effects them meaning its different from the other media effect theories.
This theory suggests that people deliberately look for specific media sources for their own personal needs or aims which can involve things like communicating with family or friends from distances apart, taking up a new hobby and looking to further expand your knowledge or to simply just entertain yourself by playing a video game or loading up a TV show, the opportunities are actually endless with the technology we all have access in this modern age in time.
This means that a individual is in complete control of what they do with the media that they have access too and are less influenced by the messages of that media. The Gratification theory today is used by connecting our media usage with individual factors such as why we even use the media in the first place and the gratification received from it. Within this theory there are four main areas covered. Surveillance, Accessing news programs or radio stations to seek information and learn what is going on in our world. Personal identity, understanding who you are as a individual as well as further understanding your beliefs and values. Personal Relationships, Having a favourite actor in a film or tv show and become attached to that character and look forward to the next instalment or series, And finally Diversion, using the media as a opportunity to escape from the stress of your day to day life weather that be scrolling through social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook or Twitter or isolating yourself in your bedroom to binge watch a favourite tv-show. Another example of diversion can even be to simply just pass the time like using the media to occupy you as your waiting for a bus or train.
Reception theory
The Reception theory was by a man called Stuart hall who applied this in the 1970's and it became know as the Reception theory, which is the idea that in media communication can produce and code its texts with meaning. For example Lighting may be used to create a certain emotion which helps the person looking at whatever it is understand the theme and potentially the message behind the media.
Or even a certain font in newspapers and magazines can be used to let the viewer understand if something is a positive or negative thing. Another example can also be when a character in a video game, film or TV show wear a certain outfit that makes it clear that they either a good guy or bad guy. so in conclusion there are many ways in which producers are able to add meanings behind things to which the audience will see and feel but these things are not always understood by the people viewing as in the past there has been cases where the producers have been misunderstood on what they were trying to convey.
For example back in 2009 animal rights group "PETA" brought out a billboard in an attempt to advertise going meat-free to save animals but quite understandably people were offended by how the advertisement depicts an obese woman with the phrase "save the whales, go vegetarian" which was misunderstood as a way to shame people who are overweight.
Another example was back in 2015 as this advertisement became highly controversial due to the misunderstanding that the message was that if you don't look like the model in this advert then you are not "beach body ready" which was not the producers intention at all.
Music Video
Different sectors in the media
The media is hugely diverse when it comes to its variety of different sectors. sectors such as Photography, tv and film which are all equally different from each other as they each offer different forms of satisfaction and entertainment for people who are interested in them.
Like for example in film there are a wide variety of different genres like horror, comedy and action which are there to satisfy all different types of audiences. A film genre will heavily influence the use of different styles such as low key lighting to create a mood in a scene or to create suspense there will be things such as close up shots as well as tight framing all to keep a viewer engaged and on the edge of their seats throughout the entirety of the film.
My favourite genre of film has to be comedy as they typically maintain a positive feel throughout and would usually leave me in a good mood once the film is over. Some examples of films in this genre consist of films like Wayne's world, life of Brian and coming to America which are a few of my most favourite comedies to watch.
Similar to film is Tv as it can also have similar genres when put in a soap format but what makes tv different from film is that it offers shorter and lighter entertainment such as news broadcasts like good morning Britain and sky news which are usually produced more locally to the viewer as it will in this example include things like a weather broadcast as well as local news headlines. but that's not all as tv also provides things like game shows which viewers are able to play along and interact with creating an experience completely different to other sectors like film and photography.
One of the main reasons I enjoy the tv sector of media is for tv shows like the Simpsons and the inbetweeners as they are split into episodes which makes it more easier to watch as I am able to watch a few episodes at a time and having the option to go back to them further on in time.
Finally another big sector in the media is photography. This sector is used in many different ways, a few examples being for things such as fashion, where companies have models dress in the latest items of clothing and shoot typically in a studio using all kinds of different lighting techniques all with the aim to sell a product and make it do well.
But that's not all photography is used for as it is also known to be used by the press to have images in things like newspapers and magazines. This kind of photography is usually just done by what is known as "paparazzi" who are people that will carry a cameras on them and try to find opportunities to take pictures of celebrities so that they can be published in the media for other peoples enjoyment.
Pre-production
For my pre-production I have planned out all my plans for my video step by step to ensure that on location I know exactly what I'm doing which eliminates time wasting and also makes the video run smoothly. For my music video I will be following a small narrative of a girl that at first does not care about anyone feelings but learns to eventually as the story line moves forward and develops while following the lyrics of the song.
( Shot list )
Location organising
Editing screenshots
(Premier pro software)
(Cross-fade transition being used in a part of my video)
Music Choice
My song choice for this music video was the song titled "No buses" by the rock band Artic monkeys which I had chosen because it was a song which I felt I would be able to make a story line out of which was my own personal aim for this Unit 4 project. I have been a huge fan of the band itself since a young age as I enjoy their style of music and the kind of a authentic, nostalgic effect they have in there early music videos which is the kind of style I was aiming to have in my own video, similar to the likes of their "Leave before the lights come on" music video.
Another thing I like about the bands style of music video is that the majority of them are all filmed with natural lighting and with usually a simplistic set such as on a street somewhere but at the same time look good to view and have loads of different angles in their scenes.
This fits with their aesthetic and theme of the band as a whole.
Final Music Video
Evaluation & Reflection
Comments