Third album cover idea

 

The whole idea of this album cover is to have a girls face with powder paint all over her on the front cover, filling up the whole page with bold and sharp text saying the name of the album (Love Me Again).

 

Iconography linked to sound...

- The powder paint shows the modern and young stance to the album. Because the powder paint is bright and colourful, it shows that the sound is going to be loud and upbeat.

 

Typography linked to sound...

- The typography that says 'Love Me Again' is in a very bold block type which shows that the song stands out and is very out there and is up beat. The fact that it is very sharp and angular shows that there is no flow to the song but that it is very to the point and up beat.

 

Conventions...

- The song that we have picked is a dance/pop song. The conventions of this genre of song is loud, bold, colourful, up beat and powerful. We have showed this in our album cover idea through the typography and the iconography with the bold and colourful text and picture.

 

Meta-narrative

- John Newman has a traditional look to himself. He is very old school and retro. On his album covers you see dull colours and the main focus is him on the front. We have added the UKF (who remixed the song) look to our album cover and made it very colourful and bold to make it stand out as a dance/pop album. 

Second album cover idea

 

For this album cover idea we came up with a symbol for the song. We picked a heart for the 'Love' part of the song and we put an arrow on the end of the heart to show the 'Again' part of the song. Together, this symbol spells out 'love Me Again'.

 

Iconography linked to sound...

- We decided that the Outside of the heart would have splattered powder paint on a black background with the heart filled in black. With the bright colours of the powder paint and the boldness of the black heart, this shows that the sounds are going to be loud and very sharp and to the point. It shows the dance/pop genre within the album cover.

Typography linked to sound...

- The typography that says 'Love Me Again' is in a very bold block type which shows that the song stands out and is very out there and is up beat. The fact that it is very sharp and angular shows that there is no flow to the song but that it is very to the point and up beat.

Conventions...

- The song that we have picked is a dance/pop song. The conventions of this genre of song is loud, bold, colourful, up beat and powerful. We have showed this in our album cover idea through the typography and the iconography with the bold and colourful text and picture.

Meta-narrative

- John Newman has a traditional look to himself. He is very old school and retro. On his album covers you see dull colours and the main focus is him on the front. We have added the UKF (who remixed the song) look to our album cover and made it very colourful and bold to make it stand out as a dance/pop album.

First album cover idea

 

For this album cover we decided to have a totally black background with just one hand print that had been covered in bright, colourful powder paint, in the middle of the cover.

 

Iconography linked to sound...

- The bold and colourful hand against a very black background shows that the sound stands out and just like the hand does. We decided to do a hand print because it links to throwing powder paint which is in our music video. I think the fact that there is just one hand print on a black background shows the power of the song.

 

Typography linked to sound...

- The typography that says 'Love Me Again' is in a very bold block type which shows that the song stands out and is very out there and is up beat. The fact that it is very sharp and angular shows that there is no flow to the song but that it is very to the point and up beat.

Conventions...

- The song that we have picked is a dance/pop song. The conventions of this genre of song is loud, bold, colourful, up beat and powerful. We have showed this in our album cover idea through the typography and the iconography with the bold and colourful text and picture.

Meta-narrative

- John Newman has a traditional look to himself. He is very old school and retro. On his album covers you see dull colours and the main focus is him on the front. We have added the UKF (who remixed the song) look to our album cover and made it very colourful and bold to make it stand out as a dance/pop album. 

Lupe Fiasco - iconography

Iconography...

 

Iconography is the symbolic representation, especially the conventional meanings attached to an image or images.

 

Lupe Fiasco...

Lyrics Vs visuals - The lyrics of the song 'Superstar' match the iconography of the album cover because it is almost like he is out of this world and in outer space. Superstar is quite a Si-fi word and fits with the look of the cover, with the bright lights and the fact that he is floating.

Sound Vs visuals - The sound of the music fits with the look of the album cover because although this music is slightly mellow it shows that he is up and coming and it shows a slight modern tinge to it. The fact that he doesn't fill up the whole cover may show that he is not the only person on this track and that he does collaborations with other people.

Typography - I didn't think that the typography went well with the sound of his music however I do think it fits with the album cover because it look like it's from out of space just like the picture.

This whole research of other peoples album covers will help us with our ancillary task by helping us find the right iconography to use and the right typography to use. We can see that the iconography, typography, sound and visuals all fit together nicely and this is what we need to achieve within our ancillary task.

John Newman - Iconography

MTV Dance logo and final music video



We were almost at the end of the editing process and there was just one last thing to do to make it look complete. To make it look like a real, professional music video, we decided to put the MTV Dance logo in the top left hand corner. This would make it look more believable as a real music video that is being played on a music TV channel. It definitely gives our music video the final touch and makes it look complete and finished. Once we had done this, we watched the whole music video back from start to finish and we decided that it was complete.





Our final music video...

Letter boxing

Now that our sequence was completely finished and edited with the colour grading all done, we could letter box it all, which means to have two black strips, one at the top and one at the bottom of the screen, which makes the whole thing look more professional. This took up a lot of time too as we had to do it clip by clip again. We then had to change the aspect ratio of some clips as the blacks strips had cut out peoples faces etc so we had to just move the clip up or down so that the whole image fitted into the screen. Another reason why we chose to letter box it is that a lot of other dance music videos have done it so it seems to be a convention of dance music videos. Once we had finished letter boxing the footage it almost looked complete.

Editing

We had a bit of a problem when sending the file back to Final Cut Pro from Color. When the footage got back to Final Cut Pro, There were a few clips that went missing and hadn't been colour graded. We then had to find the right clips and put them back into their places by looking at the original sequence and finding the correct clips. After we had sorted this out and all the sequence was back together, we had to colour grade those clips in Final Cut Pro which meant doing them separately. There were quite a few clips to do so this took up a bit of time. However we did get it done and the sequence was now all back together and colour graded making it look like a music video.

Colour grading

We new that our music video didn't quite look right for some reason and we decided it was because the colouring wasn't right and the scenes then seemed not to fit together as one music video. The powder paint fight was too grainy and didn't have enough contrast or brightness to it. The studio scene was just too dull and didn't fit with the powder paint fight scene, and the smashing plates and lip syncing needed their colour changing slightly and needed to be brightened up. We used the program 'color' to do the colour grading with which, when we first went onto it, we didn't have a clue what we were doing. We played around for a bit and eventually figured out how to do it but we had to do it clip by clip and with our music video having a lot of choppy shots in it, it meant being patient and taking time over it. We changed the colours, the contrast and the lighting and we then sent the sequence back to Final Cut Pro so that we could edit more if we needed too. The colour grading was what made the footage look like one whole music video and what made everything fit together in the end. This whole process was very successful.

Editing

Today, we finished the whole sequence so all the shots were in the right place and the music video made sense. This was quite a stressful day as we wanted to get the sequence done by the end of the day and we didn't know if we would be able to do it but we stuck to our schedule and we got it all done. We did not follow the storyboard completely because some of the shots just didn't work. However, I think the shots that we have done, have worked out for the better and the music video does look good. We all watched it through and we still thought there was something missing. It still didn't quite look right and this is when we started to colour grade.

Importing everything

We have now got to the stage of importing all of our footage so that absolutely everything is in Final Cut Pro. All of the powder paint footage and the studio footage is already up on Final Cut Pro but we just need to import the final bits including the smashing plates and the lip syncing. Once this is done we can finally start to edit it all together and finish the sequence and then we can finalize the sequence with the finishing touches.

Filming the smashing plates

We decided that the darkest place we would find that would be good for shooting this scene was in the photography's dark room. It was pitched black so we could use the spotlight on the camera which gave the same light as the other scenes we had shot (paint scene and studio scene). One of us stood on a chair while the other filmed and the one standing on the chair, dropped the plate from that height with a bit of powder paint on it so that it would link into the powder paint fight and so that there would be an explosion of powder paint when the plate hit the floor. This worked very well and we got some great shots from this filming session.