Album Cover Analysis

To gather further ideas into how the group and myself would design our own album cover and as part of the ancillary task, I have researched into Pop Rock album covers that convey the types of images and connotations I would like to use for my own cover. These 3 album covers in my opinion are good examples and motivation for the creation of my own. They are the debut album's of Lily Allen's "Alright Still", Miley Cyrus' "Breakout" and Katy Perry's "One of the Boys".

Editing

After the problem of losing the majority of our work, the team continued the editing process, confident we would be able to reproduce and improve our music music video. As we followed our storyboards this made the editing uncomplicated, and the first 23 seconds were edited. The transitions that were included were:

Jump Cut

The jump cut was dominantly used to speed up the scenes where our characters were walking down the road to the speed date. The fast action appeals to the comic book influences and it also created an upbeat, fun feel to the scene and played on the beats of the music.

Wipe

Playing three scenes together would be too time consuming in editing, along with the fact that the software did not include this transition and so a wipe transition was applied as a substitute. It reinforced the chronology of the dates, first the Punk, then the Hunk and finally the geek (Superman) and turned out to be extremely effective, showing the differences and distinctions between the three dates.

Dream Effect

The dream effect was added to the scenes of the characters walking down the road to the speed dating event. It creates a relevance between the characters and the sign, but also adds to a surreal, unrealistic tone found in comic books, which was important in our research and planning ideas.

Editing Problem

It was discovered that the editing we had completed at the City Learning Centre last month had disappeared as it was not saved and so we had only 8 seconds of footage, rather than the previous 28. In this time we had manage to input the beat marks at the point of the beat in the music to allow for a transition to occur. As the beats were sharp, it allowed for a change of shot to happen every half a second. It was not possible to recover the missing file, although iMovie automatically saves any changes you make it seemed strange that the work had gone missing and it was not on the hard drive either. Therefore the production team have agreed to start our editing from scratch. Although time consuming, we can also improve on the work we have already completed.

The Digipak

A digipak is the alternative to standard jewel case packaging. Made mostly from thick card, it is virtually shatterproof and allows great graphic display. Originally used for the album packaging of leading muscians, the digipak and digipak family are now priced reasonably enough to be used for any CD or DVD project/ It is an extremely versatile packaging and can be made to accomodate a booklet. In addition, the panels can be increased from 4 to 6, 8 or more.

They make a big statement, they represent the ultimare custom packaging for your CD replication project. A digipak is also a more environmentally friendly option when compared with traditional plastic jewel cass of DVD cases. Dimensions based on a standard 4pp digipak are 139.5mm x 6mm x 125.5mm.

Album Cover Iconography

I have looked into a number of images which I hope to convey in my own album cover for the genre/pop rock. This included colours, symbolism, images and font.

Editing

In our lesson on 14th December we took a trip to the City Learning Centre to make use of their iMac equipment. The purpose of the morning was to receive help in the editing of our music video from a proffesional user of the iMovie programme and to gain progress in the final stages of the editing.

We encountered many problems on the day though. We had agreed earlier on that we wanted to use the transition applied in Blink 182's music video "Always", but it was not included in the iMovie software and so this would not be achieved which we were disappointed about. Instead we will use the "wipe" transition in it's place.

Our shot transitions we were told, were too slow and we were adviced that the transitions should occur on the sharp beat. This was achieved using a technique on the keyboard that cut each clip with precise timings for the beat by adding time markers.

Famous Album Covers

The album cover for The Velvet Underground & Nico is recognizable for featuring an Andy Warhol print of a banana on the cover. Early copies of the album invited the buyer to "peel slowly and see"; peeling back the banana skin revealed a flesh-coloured banana underneath. A special machine was needed to manufacture these covers, but record label MGM paid for the costs, figuring that any ties to Warhol would boost sales of the album. The reissued vinyl editions of the album don't feature the peel-off sticker and so the original copies of the album with the peel-sticker feature are extremely rare collector's items. It is also notable that the original release featured Warhol's signature.

Nirvana's Nevermind album cover shows a baby swimming towards a US dollar bill on a fish hook. According to lead singer Kurt Cobain, he conceived the idea while watching a programme on water births with drummer Dave Grohl. It was mentioned to art director Robert Fisher who found stock footage of underwater births, but were deemed too graphic for the record company. Also, the stock house that controlled the photo of a swimming baby wanted $7,500 a year for its use. Instead Fisher sent a photographer to a pool for babies to take pictures. Many shot's were taken and the band settled on the image of a three-month-old boy. The image is one of the most iconic in rock history and caused controversy where supermarkets refused to sell it. Cobain compromised by allowing a sticker to cover the baby's genitals.

The Grammy Award-winning album packaging for The Beatle's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band features a colourful collage of life-sized cardboard models of famous people on the front of the album cover. The Beatle's themselves, in the guise of the Sgt. Pepper band, are dressed in custom-made military style outfits. According to designer Peter Blake the original concept was to create a scene that showed the Sgt. Pepper band performing in a park, but gradually evolved into it's final form as shown. In keeping with the park concept, the foreground of the scene is of a floral display incorparating the word "Beatles" spelt out in flowers. There are also several affectations from the Beatles' homes such as small statues belonging to John Lennon. The collage itself depicted more than 70 famous people, including Edgar Allen Poe, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Bob Dylan.