CD/Digipack Cover Design and Annotation.

This is the paper design of my front cover, here I intend to use a particular still from my group's video - where the opposing gangs and their leaders (Professor Green and Maverick) face one another. I have decided to keep it in night-vision as the green fits in with my chosen artist (Professor Green) and will help towards a colour design, which along with memorable moments from the video will help me create iconography. As for the artists name, I am going to use a particular font which will also feature in my website. For the single title and everything else (including the other written text on my site) the font will be block writing.

This is my back cover, despite the fact that I am creating a single rather than an album cover I have decided to keep the convention and feature the name of the one song on the back (a track-listing none the less). What features on the other disc is also linked here, the green background is from the night-vision, I think I will take a picture of a particular location from my groups video, this night-vision background will be consistent.

In this single cover design I really want to highlight the opposition between these two gangs as it is a major vessel within the concept of my groups video. I want to feature photographs (special effects with night vision, of course) of one member of each opposing gang on CD1 and CD2. Again, these will be featured on my website in order to help create iconography.

Updating Professor Green.

Seeing as Jemma has contact with Professor Green through facebook, she thought it would be a good idea to inform him of our progress as from the 25th november. I was unaware of this having been posted and therefore am posting it late.

15.12.2010 - Change of Location.

Last Thursday, whilst I was dealing with some personal issues, my group decided to change the location in which we will film the gorillas part due to the lack of lighting in our original location. We've decided to film on the field in the school's ground due to the fact its on premises, therefore its safer, and the flood lights which will mean our film has better lighting and hopefully, a better quality.

8.12.2010

We have recently uploaded the footage from 30.11.2010 onto our group mac and reviewed it a short while ago, as predicted, due to the lack of light the quality isn't as good as our former shooting sessions. We're currently looking at what it is we could keep, what is energetic and looks good, but when we film next, we'll reshoot the scene, hopefully with a more enthusiastic cast which would then lead to better footage.

For the most part, we've decided what it is we can keep but will re-film everything.

Eminem (Iconography research).

I have chosen an artist from the same genre as my Professor Green, who has had a long-lasting career Eminem. I'm going to evaluate the iconography between Eminem's website (From a previous post), an album/single cover and a music video, to see how effective they are and how they're used: I am confident that this will help me develop my chosen ideas.

Like Toy Soldiersis a cover by Eminem, only using a vocal sample of the original song. The lyrics depict many problems within the rap community, especially in rap-wars between artists and finds Eminem attempting to explain and offer a truce to his enemies. The single cover for this song (above) contains Eminem's logo, which has (as previously stated) accompanied him through out his career, making the artist recognisable. The font has remained the same to that of his name for the title, and this is a re-occuring theme through out the covers of Eminem's songs and website (for the logo of his name). The front cover of this single links excellently to the video where Eminem seems to compare the lives of rappers to toys (perhaps suggesting that their lives are thrown away needlessly), it depicts a literal toy solider with blood leaking from its body. This along with the video, illustrates Eminem's point effectively and in turn, makes for an effective single cover.

Initial ideas for CD/Digipak.

Initially, I was going to make a whole album cover for Professor Green, which would obviously include my groups chosen track 'Jungle'. I decided to have a picture of the boy who acted Professor Green in the video on my front cover, using a still from what we had previously shot. I was torn between the use of block font or the graffiti font that I had found. However, I have already seen the album cover that exists for 'Alive 'Till I'm Dead' and I believed that if I had stuck to this choice that my own cover would be far too similar in its layout to the original to be credited for my own ideas and I wanted to avoid this. Though I have discarded this decision, I am considering using Professor Green's actor on the website.
Instead, I have decided that it would be more sensible to use a design a single cover for the track we are filming, which I will also insert on my webpage. I made this decision as I believe that I'll be able to effectively link iconography between the three, which the audience will be able to recognise. I still plan to use a still from our video, however I want to encapsulate what I believe is an important part of it: the face off between Professor Green, the lions and Maverick, the gorillas. I'm still quite undecided on the type of font I'm going to use although I am more partial to using block font as its used mostly on my website: I want the graffiti font to be exclusively for Professor Green's name. On the back, of course, I will have the track name and the extra disc's name ('The making of.'). On the inside, there will be two discs and as of yet, I'm still deciding what I want on the inside.

Website update.

I had made decent progress on my website, but then, at one point lost everything and have had to start from scratch. Personally, I have a fair bit of difficulty with the software, however, as I am slowly getting used to it, I am finding everything a little less frustrating. My website still isn't near completion due to a fair few setbacks, however, I am investing time into my website out of school hours and I will continue to do so until it is completed.
Currently, my website isn't anywhere near completion and in some ways, I am struggling with it: I am constantly thinking of ways to link the iconography of my website to the video (The filming of which is almost done) and now, where we are considering the design of our CD/Digipak, I believe it will be a lot easier to do this, because the three are being looked at together. Once I am confident that I have the iconography for everything linked together, hopefully, I will move through the completion of the website. This is the first update I have posted on my blog for my website, due to my not being happy with it and being quite unsure how I would link everything, but I shall post on here regularly about my website until it is finished.

30.11.2010

Last Tuesday, Jemma, Joe and I tried to do the last section of our filming but again, we were let down by the majority of our cast not being able to make it to filming - we managed to get the majority of the gorillas footage done, however I'm not too sure about the films quality due to the fact that our location wasn't as well lit as we had anticipated. Despite the lack of light, we improvised and used the torches from our phones which did work, but the lighting would have been much better if there were street lights. We didn't have the song with us, which didn't help our other main actor mouth the words and so we were unable to do this shot but the actors we did have, weren't acting as enthusiastic and I'd hoped they would be. Admittedly, Denzi helped a lot with the last lot of filming we did by getting the actors to be more relaxed and eased them into their roles as the rest of us gave them instructions - I think Denzi will help a lot with our next filming as he brings an energy to the set. As a group we have decided to film some of the gorillas footage once more in the hope of getting a better quality and a wider variety of shots.
Here are photo's of our shooting plan, which we prepared whilst waiting for it to get darker:








































This is the same as the photo above, however we annotated the drawing in order to get a clear idea of what we were shooting and to film more effectively:
























Here are some photo's I took whilst we were filming: