Russell Howard at the 02 Arena...

A couple of weeks ago (20th February) I went to see one of my favourite stand-up comedians perform at the 02 Arena. This was my view from where I was sat;



It was interesting to see the choice of videos that were being played whilst we were waiting for his performance to start and during the interval. Among some popular music videos by Florence and The Machine and Mumford and Sons (typically Indie!) some short films were played that made me think about our media coursework.

I noted down some of the names of the films to see if I would be able to find them and refer to them on my blog but they were really difficult to find. However, when I went on Future Shorts YouTube channel there were plenty of examples that were similar to those shown on the Russell Howard tour. Here are some of those examples;



I really like this short film because of the incredible use of stop motion and atmospheric mise-en-scene to produce a very "art-deco" film. This video has given me lots of ideas of how to use stop motion in our own music video.



The use of colour and camera movements in this short film are what excited me about this video, as it also gave me some ideas as to how we can use colour and editing techniques in a fun way in our own music video when we eventually begin to use Final Cut Pro.

I will keep looking out for the particular short films that I wanted to add to my blog but the main thing I liked about them is the way they used selective colour and stop motion to produce some vibrant and intriguing short films. Most of the short films shown were produced by either FutureShorts or BlinkTV.

Analysis of CD Digipaks/Album Covers...

Whilst browsing the internet looking for charts of the top album covers of all time I came across this website that has a feature called >> 'Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Album Covers' <<

I chose my favourite from this list and analysed it as part of my research into CD digipaks and album covers. This will help me when I come to designing my own digipak, as the list consists of album covers from musicians of the same genre as our chosen song by Kings Of Leon (Charmer).

Here is my favourite album cover on the list and my analysis of it;

U2 - War

The reason why I chose this album cover as my favourite out of the list of Rolling Stone's Top 100 Album Covers, was because it was one of the only ones that caught my eye immediately because of the striking image of the young boy in black and white. Something about the simplicity of the photograph combined with a subtle depth of meaning drew my eyes straight to it and made me want to know more about the story of this young boy; especially because of the title of the album.

Also, the bold red text in stark contrast with the black and white photograph definately makes the album cover stand out and attracts peoples attention. It is clear why they have not included an image of the musicians themselves on the album cover when most bands of this genre would want to display themselves on the album cover because of how desperate fans are to gain insight into the lives of the bands. However, they use this image on the album cover to subtly hint at the fact that U2 are constantly doing work for charity, so in this way the band are still revealing their purpose and intention through their artwork.

Here is an example digipak from a media printing website (this website would be very helpful if we were to actually print our digipak);



This digipak caught my eye as I was trawling through the many images of digipaks online again because of the fact that it is an interesting photograph in black and white, coupled with red and white text. This technique seems to work well in album artwork as it is quite a striking way of using colour (or the lack of it) to enhance an image. This picture of the digipak is also helpful to me as part of my research because it shows me how the digipak is supposed to look and what kind of thing we are aiming for in our own digipaks. I think the fact that I am a photography student definately draws me to album covers just like this one that are interesting photographically, so I will probably do something similar with a simple photograph on my own digipak.

Finally, here is one of my favourite album covers of all time for the album 'Only Revolutions' by an alternative rock band called Biffy Clyro;

Once again the use of clever and unique photography on the front cover and on the CD itself drew my eye to the cover. It is interesting to note as well that the song titles are not only on the back cover of the CD Digipak but also on the CD itself. This is something I have to consider when designing my own CD Digipak for our song.

All of this research into CD Digipaks will be invaluable to me when I begin to design my own CD Digipak because I now know the trends in the designs that are used to sell bands as part of different genres.

Useful Links...

Here are some useful links that we were given after our trip to RichMix that I will also add to the links on the side of my blog for future reference. Pete Fraser's is particularly helpful as he knows just what we need to put in our music videos in order to get the best results.

Digital Dream Door - A different selection, chosen for "their direction, choreography, art direction, special effects, editing, cinematography and overall creativeness".

Pitchfork - Top 100 music videos.

Format Mag - Format magazine's best hip-hop videos.

Academy Films - Corin Hardy's page from Academy Films.

Corin Hardy's Website - Corin's website.

Pete Fraser's Blog - Pete's weekly blog for media magazine.