Digipacks, Why Are They Preferable

In order to prepare for our ancillary task of making a digipack I have decided to do some thinking on the subject of why they are preferable to ordinary CD cases.

A digipack is a cd case that can contain multiple discs, information booklets and other paraphenalia that are usually preffered over ordinary CD cases. A digipack is usually six panels in dimension as opposed to a CD case being four panels and holds more merchandise within. It is the added merchandise that is the main hook, merchandise such as a bonus CD with perhaps extra songs or information about the band as well as booklets with song lyrics and background information on songs. Comparing  ordinary CD case with a digipack is similar to comparing paperback and hardback books, one is preferable over the other but mainly to collectors and those who wish to have what is seemingly the best in everything.
Below is a Digipack for the beatles yellow submarine album

The digipack contains:

1. a CD
2. An informational booklet
3. four animators slides from the film
4. a lyrics and meanings booklet
5. a unfoldable poster
6. three postcards reflecting the theme of yellow submarine

By this we can conclude the main reason for the Digipack's success.

1. extra merchandise
2. extra information
3. collector's value
4. sturdiness

Planning Our Sets and Performers

I have created a short video on how we had to put together our interior sets and organise after an accident with our actress.

Unmentioned in the video are the many exterior shots that we do after school ours when it's a little darker, these include busy streets and alleyways in the town of bourne.
these include many of the alleys and streets in this area along west street...

Editing Technique Research

During the revision of our shooting script we thought it may be a good idea to research editing technique and it’s use in other videos of our genre.

The Human League-Don’t You Want Me Baby?-Electro Pop

This video does not use many overcomplicated editing techniques preferring to stick with long drawn out shots rather than cutting very rapidly from shot to shot and scene to scene except for during the bridge of the song. The narrative however is quite complex with members of the band interacting with characters and workers in the film crew for seemingly the video they are in. This produces a strange narrative and visual effect with the use of mirrors, on screen editing equipment and use of shots taken from the movie being filmed throughout the main narrative.

Ke$ha-Tik Tok-hip hop, pop, rap

this video was actually a major influence during the making of our original script. It had a major influence on our narrative concerning the party girl lifestyle and it's consequences. As a source of inspirasation for our editing process it is interesting to note the use of very fast edits in contrast to the human league video. Where the human league video concentrated on long exposition shots where Tik Tok prefers to concentrate on fast and flashy edits. The purpose that the video's editing appears to be based around is keeping the audience fixated on the video as well as squeezing a long story into the period of three minutes and twenty one seconds.
Both forms of editing fast and slow represent form and function being both flashy and interesting enough to maintain viewer interest and yet work around the story being told or the singer's performance.

Planning: our shooting script

Planning

Our final planning started with a simple shooting script gleamed from the story and performance ideas that we explained in our pitch. 

Time frame	Total time	Action/performance	Camera angles	Other information
00.00 to 00.08	00.08	A man is seen on his phone in a hotel room a woman is stood behind him rubbing his shoulders. He drops his phone on the bed and we zoom into the blank screen allowing us to flow without a cut to the next shot	The shot must be framed tightly and show nothing above shoulder level on either individual this will create a sense of mystery about them.	The video will begin before the start of the song with a short animatic of a ringing Iphone
00.09 to 00.16	00.07	A series of shots of a girl in the ruins of her apartment builds slowly before focusing in on her at the end of the build she needs to open her eyes as the real music begins.	A night vision shot panning around the room before focusing in on the girl’s face.	N/A
00.17 to 00.28	00.11	Rapid interchanging of shots of our singer posed up against a brick wall	Shots will range from extreme close ups to medium shots and will be changing quite rapidly	The end of this series of shots will include the next set of shots inside the club to fade over
00.29 to 00.39	00.10	Similar expose of shots but in extreme close ups	Tightly framed in extreme close up	Last shot should slowly fade out in order to do a straight cut to the next scene
00.40 to 01.05	00.25	Sudden cut to our girl in an empty club there are drinks and a bar but it is otherwise empty she dances and sings to the camera during certain moments but by the end of the scene she seems dejected and run down	Long shots of our singer in order to give a sense of isolation and loneliness	Interspersed with shots of previous scene faded over or cut in for certain moments in the lyrics
01.06 to 01.30	00.24	Wandering the streets our singer appears sick but at the end of the scene we fade to black for another instantaneous cut back to the club	Medium shots of the singer face on giving the perspective of facing what’s ahead	It may be applicable to use a single tightly framed panning shot of the singer moving towards the camera
01.31 to 01.54	00.23	An instantaneous shot back to the club where we start to see our singer drinking heavily all singing is synched with faded over shots of her singing in the streets	Long shots from a distance and taken at an angle from a height abovethe singer to give the impression we are looking down on her.	N/A
01.55 to 02.15	00.20	A slow fade from the scene in the club to our singer singing against the wall but during the break before the bridge we see only her lips faded over the image in the club where the girl has gone crazy and has broken bottles and overturned tables	Camera shots during this section are to be increasingly random in distance and zoom so as to be indicative of the girl’s drunken state.	N/A
02.16 to 03.11	01.05	At the bridge during the guitar solo we see a variety of stills of our singer      · Drinking heavily      · Flirting and being rejected      · Being ejected from a club      · Throwing up in an alley      · Being arrested and put in a cell or sleeping in the streets	The stills taken should be displayed against a glowing background and when being taken should be shot from different angles and levels of zoom in order to ensure a range of options in the final edit	N/A

Our Pitch

In order to evaluate our ideas among our Peers we created this pitch in to help explain our idea for a video and what we want to do. We created it in powerpoint format in order to create a presentation that would cover everything and not have to be repeated more than once or twice to large test groups.

our title page giving a short summary of artist and song

our narrative page explained our ideas and alternating themes we wished to explore whether or not a performance based piece or a narrative based piece would be preferable in the end we heard a resounding call for narrative over performance from our test group. the themes the narrative driven script explores include lonliness, over indulgence and the downside to the party girl life style.

 a short list of specific effects we were planning to use in the video

 in our powerpoint we also made a point of making examples of possible shooting locations (above and cars for use in the final scenes(below)

 Lastly our actress Shelby Doe was selected to work on the project essentially because we need a female vocalist for this particular song.

 Our test groups were composed of our target audience and many of the subjects of our questionaire we developed our ideas based on our questionaire results. These were very positively received and we are now working on a shooting script.

Target Audience Questionaire

In order to gain a better idea of what our audience expects we are going to distribute a small questionnaire amongst our target audience-students aged 16-19- which we will then begin to build our central themes around. We constructed the questionnaire mainly around our initial ideas.

The questionnaire works as follows-

1.       We establish that the recipient of the questionnaire falls into our target market

-Age-15-21

-gender is not an issue particularly although we will have to ask a mix of people in order to get a good grasp of the mass of our audience by targeting one specific gender you close off a massive audience to yourself

-Occupation student

-Likes pop or rock music

2.       We play them the selected song

3.       They answer the questionnaire.

What genre would you associate this music with?	Pop
	Rock
	Techno
	experimental

 

In the chosen genre what would you expect to see most for this song?	Performance
	Dance
	Narrative
	Other please specify

 

If performance then what would you expect the primary performance to consist of?	Singing
	Keyboard
	Spectacle
	Other please Specify

 

If narrative what do you think the primary emotion would be?	Happiness
	Solitude
	Excitement
	Other please specify

 

What type of locations would the music suggest?	Nightclubs and city streets
	An apartment
	Techno
	Other please specify

 

In your eyes what themes does this song bring up?	Partying
	Fun
	Friendship
	Other please specify

 

Based on the rhythm and tempo of the song how would you expect the editing and scene transitions to occur	Fast paced moving with every beat
	Slower moving elegantly from scene to scene and shot to shot
	Slow scene transitions but lots of fast paced shots of the same scene with immersive editing and effects
	Other please specify

 

Our answers from a set of six students

Three male students and three female students

1-Kingston Capes-male-student-age 18

2-Evan Davies-male-student-age-19

3-Timor Kaya-male student-age18

4-Emily Reeves-female-student age 17

5-Rachael Evans-female-student-age 17

6-Shannon Tate-female-student-age 18

What genre would you associate this music with?	Pop	4, 5, 6
	Rock	1, 3
	Techno	2
	experimental

 These results show that the majority of people found the video to be pop although others considered it a rock video and the least amount of people thought it was techno. this was our expected result and show us that we need to keep to themes typically expressed in pop music such as partying and a wild life style, it may also be a good idea to theme the video around rock as well seeing as some people thought it was of that genre.

In the chosen genre what would you expect to see most for this song?	Performance	2, 4
	Dance	3
	Narrative	1, 6
	Other please specify	5-showy special effects

 We expected the majority of the subjects to pick performance which was why we were slightly suprised when narrative was chosen and dance received only one supporter. In light of this we will need to be sure to include lot's of performance based around a solid narrative idea which relates to our initially selected themes. However since there were also single votes for dance and special effects we have concluded that it would also be a good idea to devote a minority of shooting to using a special effect or dance routine.

If performance then what would you expect the primary performance to consist of?	Singing	2, 4
	Keyboard
	Spectacle
	Other please Specify

 we were suprised to see so little support for performance which makes these results a little unreliable as only two answers were given.  But we have surmised that the performance in the video should be dedicated to singing as it is what is expected and not many people seem to realise that the song was played on a keyboard or given much regard to anything besides the singing and lyrics.

If narrative what do you think the primary emotion would be?	Happiness
	Solitude	1
	Excitement	6
	Other please specify

 Given the upbeat lyrics in the song we were suprised to see the two subjects split over this. When we asked Kingston about his choice however he responded with. "it is a song concerning solitude because this girl has been left alone while her boyfriend is away." We were not prepared for this idea but it has given us some interesting ideas to work with. In the end we decided to devote the video's performance to working around the upbeat rhythm and message whilst the narrative is devoted to telling the story of a girl left alone. This will hopefully help us to produce something interesting that pleases as much of our target audience as possible.

What type of locations would the music suggest?	Nightclubs and city streets	2, 4, 5, 6
	An apartment	3
	Techno	1
	Other please specify

 We were not expecting a majority vote on this subject and frankly expected an equal amount of time seen in each locale. But when we saw the results we decided to make a change to some of our ideas and go with this instead. A change in our setting is not as drastic as a change in story or ratio of narrative to performance but it will throw up some problems during writing. We may end up using all three sets anyway in order to create a sense of time and travel in the narrative.

In your eyes what themes does this song bring up?	Partying	3 5
	Fun	4
	Friendship	2
	Other please specify	1solitude because her boyfriend’s not with her 6-heavy partying

 The theme of the song will play a major part in the narrative development and our initial pitch. For this reason we are annoyed that there is no set theme as almost every subject chose differently. Although we were releived to see the reiteration of the ideas shown in our question on narrative.

Based on the rhythm and tempo of the song how would you expect the editing and scene transitions to occur	Fast paced moving with every beat	1, 4, 6
	Slower moving elegantly from scene to scene and shot to shot
	Slow scene transitions but lots of fast paced shots of the same scene with immersive editing and effects	2, 3, 5
	Other please specify

This question was mostly to gage our audiences knowledge of media technique although it does show an interesting mix of ideas that we should try to bring into our work. Mixing slow paced edits with shorter transitions from shot to shot.